Celebrity Biographies
Blanca Portillo
Good actors are capable of interpreting any character regardless of their age, physical appearance or gender. This is the case of Blanca Portillo, for whom it is not an impediment to have to interpret, for example, a man, such as a seventeenth-century friar. It has become great especially on stage, where the skin is literally left. However, she owes her enormous popularity to television, and she is disputed by top film directors.
Born on June 15, 1963, Blanca Portillo studied to be a congress hostess. She “she wanted to work in something where she had contact with people.” But she soon realized her acting vocation, and she enrolled in the prestigious Royal School of Dramatic Art. When she left it, she stood out in the theater, in numerous productions, especially in “Winter’s Tale”, where she had a double role as a queen accused of adultery, and as her daughter, who lived as a peasant ignorant of the origin of she. Another milestone for the actress consisted of being the protagonist of the Spanish production of “Oleanna”, by David Mamet , in 1994, along with Joaquín Kremel . She played a student who met with her teacher to get her grade up.
The cinema seems quite secondary to her, since it took her a while to debut on the big screen. She finally did it in 1995, with the prison drama Entre rojas , where she was a secondary school. She was followed by a role in titles like The Dog in the Manger , The Color of the Clouds , Between the Legs , Only Mine or Elsa and Fred and interventions in series like Family Doctor and Companions .
She managed to become very popular with the general public as Carlota, the hairdresser married to a waiter in the popular sitcom Siete vidas , whose scripts were relaxed and won over viewers. But she was pigeonholed in that type of unpretentious comedy, and except for those who knew her from the theater, Blanca Portillo did not seem capable of interpreting roles with a greater dramatic background.
For this reason, her work in Volver was a pleasant surprise for most , as Agustina, the neighbor of Carmen Maura ‘s character , who suffered from cancer. Blanca Portillo achieved a great acting intensity that drew a lot of attention, despite the fact that she did not appear much on the screen either. The Manchego director took the opportunity to criticize trash TV when the patient went to a television program in which the presenter pressured her to get morbid details of her illness. “Agustina has cancer, Agustina has cancer. A big round of applause for Agustina!” Said the presenter. Her interpretive level had her rewards as she was nominated for a Goya for best secondary, while the entire female cast won the best actress award at Cannes.
He also succeeded in the challenge of playing a man, Fray Emilio Bocanegra, in Alatriste , for which he even shaved his head, although at the moment of truth it turns out that the character was quite secondary. She was Queen María Luisa, in Goya’s Ghosts , and Maribel Verdú ‘s father’s lover in Siete mesas de billiards francés , a role for which she was awarded the Silver Shell in San Sebastián. She once again put herself under the orders of Almodóvar in Los abrazos rotos , and has had a small role under the orders of Alejandro González Iñárritu in Biutiful , starring Javier Bardem .
Despite his success in the media, he has never abandoned his theatrical activity, and achieved enormous success with “Hamlet”, where he once again cross-dressed, as he played – with considerable conviction, no doubt – the tormented Danish prince in Shakespeare’s play. He invests much of what he earns from television and movies to support shows by talented young people. She has also been named director of the Mérida Theater Festival, specialized in staging Greco-Roman works.