A few days after discovering that she had been awarded the 2010 National Humor Prize, Natalia Herrera received us in her Playa apartment in the capital. This Cuban actress who took her first steps toward fame in the 1930s, wept when they brought her the news. "Instead of laughing?" I asked her. "Look, the prize is for everything that you have done to make people laugh." "I couldn’t help it, it was from joy. When you get old you become sentimental about everything and acknowledgements are very important."

Natalia, one of the greatest mixed-race women of farce in Cuba, leading actress in the Lady of the Camellias which captivated the Martí Theater in 1945, the Mimi Chula of San Nicolás del Peladero and the singing star of Catalonian Xavier Cugat’s band, has lived her 87 years "content with everything that I have done," and she believes that "I didn’t deserve so much." To her modesty one has to add her loves: acting and her son Chiqui, and her motives for pride: reaching old age with a strong mind and legs, and having been born in Cuba. Because, "being Cuban is worth more than anything else. Cubans learned with this government and demonstrated being guapo (bold and beautiful). With other governments they went about singing in the streets, liked cabarets, worked in order to enjoy themselves. This government taught them to value themselves. Now they are worth as much as an empire."

Her house, inhabited by idols of the Afro-Cuban Santería religion in various corners, also helps to reveal her as a woman of faith. The flowers and saints are accompanied by photographs of her, which cover more than one wall. Natalia points to them and describes the photos of her glory, and those in which friends like the diva Rosa Fornés and television director Abel Ponce appear.

Natalia is very expressive. Her life is full of comic situations and she has a special way of telling them. Humor occupies a primordial place in her life and she considers it an unequalled characteristic of Cubans. The years that she has dedicated to it allow her to value the development of the genre with acuity: "while it’s all very good to keep humor alive, I find that there is something that isn’t going well: before, all the humoristic groups had women and now they are all doing it with men dressed as women. They never attain the value of a woman working, because in order to act as women they have to exaggerate. There are exceptions, like Osvaldo Doimeadiós, who does it very well and naturally – wherever they put him he gets it right with his beam of light. On the other hand, in other times, no actor would criticize another. Nowadays mutual criticism is very much in fashion in the jokes.

Being an artist is very hard, because somebody always appears to criticize you. The criticism that hurts the most is that of your own compañeros. I admire Rosita Fornés, who never speaks badly of an artist; she always finds an explanation to justify people who aren’t good at what they are doing. I’d like everyone who starts out to understand that they have to make many sacrifices to achieve success. I remember the help that directors like Abel Ponce gave me in television. They had the delicacy to call us aside to explain what we were doing wrong and they gave us the confidence to rectify things. Nowadays, there aren’t many directors who point out your mistakes with care and they even get to humiliate the artists. When, already an old woman, I went to work with Ponce on Día y Noche (Day and Night, a popular crime series), he proposed a dramatic role to me and I implored him to change it. I said to him, "I’m going to do television with you, but put me with the loudmouthed women." He didn’t take any notice and replied: "You are good as an artist and you don’t know your own worth." He gave me the role of a grandmother whose granddaughter had been knocked down by a car. I warned him that I was going to cry just once and he instructed me: "Play your role, I’ll take care of mine." When I was en situ, the scene with Enrique Almirante was so real that I was crying for about an hour afterward. I am grateful for the confidence of men like this; the new generations should learn from his example.

I always go out feeling content, because people who get nervous have doubts in terms of their role. When you know the character it’s like at school with exams: if you’ve studied you can be sure that you’re going to come out well. I have remained secure in my work, I have felt joy, curiosity to see how I am received.

Yes, that’s right, I adapted to each medium. It was difficult in the beginning, because in the theater your voice has to be heard in the back row; on radio, actors have to have the idea that they’re on the beach or in a shack in the country; and on television, you have everything. It’s important to be natural. When I wanted to be an actress, my mom took me to see Julio Gallo at the Martí Theater. He discovered in me a mixed-race actress in farce. So he recommended that I focus on mixed-race women in the street, capture their gestures, look at their faces, hands, the movement of their arms, their steps. I did that: I went walking from my house with my aunt to Monte and Prado, and stopped to observe those women.

Farce is very nice and, at the same time, criticizes everything that is done badly. That is its charm, the audience laughs while making itself an accomplice of the criticism, which is fundamental in society.

The director of Rincón Criollo asked me at the beginning: "Have you ever worked in radio? Have you ever read a radio program script?" I replied: "Never, but if you give me one I’ll learn. I did the role of La Candelaria, which made me tremendously happy, because it was a successful program, which won prizes over 12 years and, on the other hand, as it criticized the government; that got us in a lot of trouble.

I was La Candelaria and Pitirre; Doña Teresa was Sol Pinelli; Rosita was the countrywoman, Marisol Alba. We criticized everything, very well done. Imagine the audience that that won; criticizing the bad things about a government, everybody listened to it. Although it was dangerous, you enjoyed interpreting your role. And we received a lot of letters praising us. Letters are very encouraging for artists, just like applause. I have not left Cuba because of my people, because when I am working in a theater, I am very grateful for the applause they give me.

I’ve been all over the place. But the way the Cubans love me is unique. At the triumph of the Revolution, my lawyer said to me: "Take the travel money and go." To which I replied: "When did I ask you for that?" I was an internationalist on three occasions; I traveled twice to southern Angola and once to Ethiopia. I did it straight off, as the oldest artist on those brigades who, at 66, was part of that project. I don’t criticize people who leave, but I would never go. If, right now, they tell me to go to a country and come back, I’d be straight off. But to stay, no. But now that you’re talking about those countries, I have to tell you that the one that I liked best was Puerto Rico. It was there that I learned to fix my own nails. What a simple memory! You see, I was going to the hairdressers and spending a whole day there. So I bought a manicure set and by asking, learnt to do them myself.

Now that did make me nervous, because it had never been done and we all felt the same. When I did the programs with Garrido and Piñeiro, the first time I spent the whole night standing on one side, without going on, waiting for them to give me a cue. When the gallego [man of Galician origin] asked me what happened and I explained, he gave me a lecture: not to learn the script, but to place myself in the proposed situation and express myself in front of the camera according to what I had read. If I have an agile mind, I thank the two of them because they taught me to improvise on that television which was new and was done live. I liked it all the more for that, I had to interpret the role in real time; it was a challenge and a marvel because hardly anyone got it wrong. In those early days of television, there are some resemblances with theater. For example, Virulo, in Échale salsita, had to recite the complete lines of each character before the function. That seemed to me an impossibility, because the improvisations occurred to me at the time. That was when I invented something that served me well. "Changó with knowledge and Yemayá in the quips." You learn bit by bit. Virulo’s method was new to me and I assimilated that I could work in that way.

Sometimes people ask me whether, if I was born again, I would dedicate myself to the same thing, and I reply: "Ay, don’t ask me that question! An artist, of course. What I have been in this life, I’d certainly enjoy in another."