Leonor Watling always wore many hats

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Leonor Watling grew up in Madrid, just as Spain itself was waking up after four decades of dictatorship. Her father was a Spanish academic, her mother an Englishwoman raised in Africa. From the start, Leonor inhabited multiple worlds—speaking different languages, moving between cultures—yet never quite belonging fully to any one of them.

She grew up with an unusual awareness of mortality. Her father was ill throughout her childhood. She lost two aunts in a car accident when she was ten. He died when she was eighteen. At the same time, she was stepping into the public eye, first through Spanish television, and then, memorably, in Pedro Almodóvar's 2002 masterpiece Talk to Her. That role introduced her to the world.

But Leonor is not only an actress. For more than a decade she fronted the band Marlango, releasing seven albums, in both English and Spanish, touring the world and finding in music a kind of refuge. Acting may have given her recognition, but music gave her control.

So from the very beginning, she lived in the space in between: between cultures, between life and death, between fame and privacy, between acting and music. That tension—between success and striving, between the public and the private—has always been part of her story.

I met Leonor years ago through Jorge Drexler, with whom she shares a life and two children. We crossed paths in Madrid, in New York, in Madison, in rehearsal rooms and kitchens and day long lunches. She sang on my father Ben Sidran's record Dylan Different. I played on a Marlango track.

Every year when I visited Spain, we would toy with the idea of doing something together. Sometimes we did, casually: singing over too much wine at our friend Jacobo Bergareche's house, or on stage at the Cafe Central in Madrid.

Last year, she came to me after a show in Madrid with a proposition: let's make a record together. I said, "great, let's call it Leo & Leo."

That record is out now! We recorded it in Madrid with the Paris based Groovy French Band, revisiting some of my songs, writing a couple of new ones, and inviting friends like Jorge Drexler, Kevin Johansen, Sol Sidran, Michael Leonhart Moses Patrou, John Ellis, and Javi Peña to join us.

When we sat down a few months ago in Javi Peña's Madrid based studio to talk, I realized this was my chance to ask Leonor the questions I'd never asked her before. About her childhood. About loss. About the burden of fame and the freedom of music. About what it means to straddle worlds. And inevitably, we talked about what it means to collaborate, how two people can share songs, stories, and identities without losing themselves.

Even when you've known someone for decades, there are still so many questions left to ask.

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