Celebrity Biographies
Belen Rueda
It is never late if happiness is good. Of course, the case of Belén Rueda is not that of an actress who triumphed as a child or young woman. But the fact is that this working woman, for the Film Academy “revelation actress” at 40 years old, has become one of the greats of Spanish cinema.
María Belén Rueda García-Porrero, better known as Belén Rueda, was born in Madrid on March 16, 1965. The second of three sisters, the family moved to Alicante when she was a girl due to asthma problems in the youngest. Since her mother was a ballet teacher, she would instill in him some dance principles. Upon reaching the age of majority, she decides to study architecture in her hometown, and she goes there, although at the same time she tries to earn some money as a model, and even selling apartments. Her photogenicity would be key for Tele 5 to sign her in 1990 as a stewardess in the program “VIP Noche” by José Luis Moreno . The girl who became co-host of the program had something, a success with an Emilio Aragónwhich was tremendously popular. Although surely the program with which the public associates her the most is the successful contest “La roulette de la fortuna”, on Antena 3.
Belén Rueda confesses that she is very shy, and that although she had thought about acting, she had always rejected the idea. However, her facet as an actress would be developed back on Tele 5, in multiple television series. First, in 1997, with her old acquaintance Emilio Aragón in Family Doctor , but later, repeating the same character, Clara, in Periodistas , and above all, the peak of her popularity on the small screen, Los Highlander, which occupied her until 2007. The actress would never regret having done so much TV, nor does she seem to have ever feared the typecasting that accompanies other professional colleagues. As she told me in an interview, “she gives the actors many possibilities to be able to develop the characters over time and in different situations, something that a movie cannot offer.”
But of course, she wanted to try movies, and the great opportunity was given to her by Alejandro Amenábar in The Sea Inside , a pro-euthanasia film in which the actress gave life to a woman who was interested in the case of the quadriplegic Ramón Sampedro, who wanted to die. If Javier Bardem shone with his own light, the truth is that Belén Rueda was not far behind, which earned him the Goya for Best New Actress in 2004. It was still ironic that someone almost 40 years old should be considered a new actress , and with so much television experience.
Rueda would soon become an actress associated with fantastic and horror films, and it is also ironic that it was not Amenábar who took her through these lands. Instead, it was Juan Antonio Bayona , produced by Guillermo del Toro , who portrayed her as an orphan and a suffering mother in El orfanato (2007). The actress knew what it is to be a mother and suffer, because she was married to Daniel Écija, with whom he had three daughters, but the second died as a baby due to heart problems. She had previously gone through a marriage with a certain Massimo in Italy. Regarding her motherhood, the actress commented: “Doing the job you like gives incredible satisfaction, but the joys that children give you are also incomparable. It would be a mistake to miss it.”
Continuing with the cinema of fantastic elements, Rueda made El mal ajeno , which has united her with Eduardo Noriega , with the production of Amenábar, and especially Los ojos de Julia (2010), with the backing ‘again’ of Del Toro, where with her blind role she emulates Audrey Hepburn from Blind Terror . In English she has shot the very minority Savage Grace (2007), where perhaps the most stimulating thing for her is having coincided with Julianne Moore .
It gives the impression that the actress measures a lot each project in which she is involved. She did not hesitate to intervene in one of the segments of 8 dates (2008), which is made up of stories of love encounters. And in 2010 she took a risk with a historical plot in the television miniseries The Princess of Éboli , where she came out of the game of giving life to the famous one-eyed woman (curiously, the same year the actress played a blind woman and a one-eyed woman ). She has also tried the theater, for example with the play “Closer”, where she was directed by Mariano Barroso .
It seems clear that Belén Rueda meditates well on the projects in which she is involved. The last thing she is busy with is Don’t be afraid , which she will premiere in 2011 under the orders of Montxo Armendáriz .