Spanish film director Pedro Almodovar confesses his tinnitus “nightmare”

The news was aired by the online Spanish medium El Español and was promptly picked up for awareness purposes by the Spanish Audiology Association, ANA

Seventy-one-year-old Almodovar, winner of two Academy Awards, and creator of such movies as Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988), All About My Mother (1999), and Talk to Her (2002), describes his tinnitus as a "nightmare". In one interview in La Razón, he said he hears the singer Peggy Lee "out of tune", listing the sounds that trouble him as bangs and hums in the ear, without any external cause for the effects.

Almodovar says he deals with the problem by spending most of his time writing and filming, and admits to his frustration at not being able to spend more time with friends and people in general. He claims he does not want to become a hindrance because of this complaint. To make matters worse, the director also suffers from photophobia, intolerance to light, the reason why he always wears dark glasses.

The social isolation experienced by Almodovar was also a nightmare for another Spanish filmmaker, the great surrealist Luis Buñuel, who lived with hearing loss for some forty years, his love of music destroyed, his social life dismantled. The hearing loss experienced by Buñuel also greatly affected his working life.

Source: Audio en Portada/El Español