The life of Hovik Keuchkerian It has not been easy at all, especially during his first years of life. Fame came late to this actor who became known throughout Spain thanks to the role of Bogotá in ‘The Money Heist’although before doing so he already had extensive experience, not only in the world of acting, but also in sports.
On the occasion of the premiere of this feature film, one of the most anticipated of the year, the actor visits the set of ‘El Hormiguero’, Pablo Motos’ show, again. There, the actor will speak openly about this new work, which will be released on next Friday October 4th on the aforementioned platform.
From fleeing Beirut due to the war to becoming Spanish boxing champion
However, even though Hovik Keuchkerian He has become one of the fashionable actors in Spanish cinema, the truth is that his personal life is very unknown to a large part of the public. We tell you everything you need to know about him: from his complicated childhood to his problems with alcohol.
Hovik Keuchkerian born in Beirut (Lebanon) on November 14, 1972. He was only three years old when the Lebanese Civil War broke out in the country and it was then that his parents, an Armenian and a Spanish woman, decided to pack their bags to flee the conflict and settled permanently in Spain, specifically in Alpedrete, where the little boy grew up.
He began working early in his father’s restaurant and during his youth he played basketball as an amateur, although his life would end up taking a radical turn when he discovered contact sports. In 1995with the few savings that he had managed to maintain, decided to move to Madrid to open his own gym, HK – it was open for almost two decades, until 2015 -, and, thanks to his imposing physique, he began to compete at a professional level: first, in kickboxing, and then tried his hand at boxing.
Actor Hovik Keuchkerian, during his time as a professional boxer
Time ended up proving him right, because in this last discipline he managed to be Spanish heavyweight champion on two occasions (2003 and 2004). However, just a year after reaching the top, he would end up retiring with a record of fifteen victories by KO and only one defeat against the French Thierry Guezouli, which motivated him to leave this sport: «I burst into tears in public, in front of about twelve thousand people. And I didn’t mind crying in front of so many people, because I collapsed,” he recalled in ‘Esquire’ magazine.
During his professional career, the boxer always tried to stay away from bad habits that could affect their performance in any way: «Until I was 32, it wasn’t that I wanted my body to be a temple, but I didn’t drink anything, I didn’t smoke, I was training, I was with my gym and my things. But I stopped boxing,” he said in the program he visits today.
The decision to leave boxing also brought the darkest moments of his life for Hovik Keuchkerian, for whom moving away from the ring meant a hard blow: «The bad thing about when you stop chasing a dream is that the next morning you have an absolute void. The day is very long, you don’t know what to do,” explained the actor, who took to drinking.
He alcohol It was the way out at that moment when he lost his passion and, although he threw himself into work, the only thing he was looking for was “come home to open the whiskey and go to bed at eleven ‘mamao'”: «I got into a work loop. Fortunately I had a job, I started doing monologues, everything went up, they called me for ‘Hispania’. “I fell in love with this profession.”
It was his mother who got Hovik to get his life back on track once and for all and give up alcohol: «My mother called me on the phone and took me to the corner of the ring and threw everything at me. My mother was Joe Frasier on the phone. He hadn’t spoken for years. He picked me up and told me: ‘You’re fat, you’re toxic, you’re ugly, you’re hunched over. You’re a piece of shit. I’m not going to tell you anymore. Do what you want, son.’ When your mother tells you that something happened inside me. I was lying on my bed at home and it upset me. And I thought that the day the old woman is gone, which I hope will be a long time from now, I don’t want her to leave a piece of shit,” the interpreter recalled.
During this time, Keuchkerian had to say ‘no’ to many projects to try to dedicate himself completely to his recovery: “This is what I am doing. I’m cleaning myself. I’m sleeping very well. I’m training very well. I see people’s reactions when they see me. I’m finding myself again. I’ve been there for a year. Within a year I will be perfectly prepared for war,” he confessed to Pablo Motos.
The detoxification process also involved saying goodbye almost completely to tobacco, another of the great vices that tormented him, and losing almost 30 kilos. The one from Beirut left the three packs of tobacco a day that I used to consume and went on to smoke one or two cigarettes.