Carmen maura

Carmen Maura is spontaneous, natural, funny, with a point of ingenuity. She is a veteran of life and work, but she retains the mischievous and curious look of someone who discovers everything for the first time. Her tone of voice also takes us back to that childhood evoked in her look. As a child, Carmen has the gift of making the unbelievable believable. Everyday characters with a surreal, unpredictable, unexpected aroma, which she turns into the most normal thing in the world.

Carmen García Maura was born in the traditional Chamberí neighborhood in Madrid on September 15, 1945. The daughter of an ophthalmologist and descendant on the maternal side of Antonio Maura, five times president of the Council of Ministers of Spain. She studied Philosophy and Letters, and Fine Arts in Paris. In 1964 she married the lawyer Francisco Forteza with whom she had two children: Carmen and Pablo. During those years she did theater as a hobby and was the director of an art gallery in Madrid. Then a critic turned to her to suggest that she dedicate herself to acting professionally. According to Carmen herself, she made up her mind immediately: “Acting was very easy for me.” It’s the one thing she’s always done really well, she reminds herself.

This decision marked his professional life –for obvious reasons– and personal. Carmen had problems with her family and her husband, who filed for divorce in 1970. After the separation, the lawyer took custody of her children, whom Carmen did not see until they were adults. But she determined to fulfill her artistic vocation, she gave herself to endless jobs on television and theaters of all kinds. The new environment that she frequented brought her closer to film directors who were taking her first steps and who would make their way into Spanish film history.

In the seventies he began his career in short and feature films. A career that has made him accumulate more than 100 titles in both film and television. During her first years she worked with those new friends who were just beginning: Pilar Miró , La petition (1976); Fernando Colomo , Tigres de papel (1977), What is a girl like you doing in a place like this? (1978) – a macabre approach to her life, since in this comic fiction her ex took away her children – and La mano negra  (1980); Carlos Saura , Blindfolded (1978).

In constant activity, the decade of her debut was also that of her union with the rookie Pedro Almodóvar . Much has been said about the “Almodóvar girls” and who first held this title and perhaps with more reason was Carmen Maura. She starred in her first feature film, Fuck…fuck…fuck me Tim!  (1978), to do the same in the transgressive and irreverent Pepi, Luci, Bom y otras chicas del montón (1980). The eighties were eminently “Almodovarian” despite the fact that she did not stop working with other directors. She with the manchego she made Ella entre tinieblas (1983), what have I done to deserve this!!  (1984), Matador (1986) , The Law of Desireand as a climax, Women on the verge of a nervous breakdown (1989). On more than one occasion she has said that the most difficult filming of her career was that of Mujeres…  Something happened between her and Pedro, who separated for two decades. None have given details about it, although they have not hidden that their relationship has changed since then. However, Almodóvar knew how to perfectly exploit Carmen’s great virtue in all her collaborations: normality. She herself says that her physique has never been the typical star-actress diva on the screen. But there is something else. Each of her works looks like the first. She has an enviable ability to make ingenuity and spontaneity always emerge. Something that leads to the aforementioned normality. Carmen can be a “Maruja” –I’ve done…!! – or an actress and voice actor – Women… – Doing the most unlikely things but in the characters she builds they are normal and therefore credible.

Things got cold with her dear Pedro, but she had plenty of reasons to smile. She won the Goya for Best Actress for Mujeres… , in addition to being one of the most popular faces in the country thanks to the television interview program “Esta noche.” Maura, she has never despised the small screen, where she has always worked and she also admits that the presenter’s job is the one that has cost her the most.

From what has been said so far it seems clear that Carmen’s field is comedy, where she fits perfectly. Works like ¡Ay, Carmela!  (1990), under the orders of Carlos Saura, and which helped him win the second Goya for her, they attest to this. But Maura has never been intimidated when it comes to accepting jobs in other genres such as the drama Shadows in a Battle (1993), by Mario Camus , where she played a former ETA terrorist, and the wonderful family drama El rey del río (1995 ), by Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón . Without forgetting the thriller in Lisbon (1999), by Antonio Hernández .

If in the eighties it was inevitable to talk about Almodóvar, in the nineties French cinema is unavoidable. Carmen herself made numerous films in the neighboring country such as Alice and Martin (1998), where she seconded Juliette Binoche . She even won the César – equivalent to the Goya – in France with La alegría está en el campo (1995). This does not mean that she forgot about Spain, where she never stopped working. Her next national success was La comunidad (2000), the black comedy by Álex de la Iglesiawith which he won his third Goya. Her apartment saleswoman, willing to take over the loot found in a house surrounded by the most unlikely neighbors, made her utter these words: “I know that I am good at making practically everything real, even the strangest things. But it is that on this occasion I have found myself with a sweet piece of paper”.

And then it “came back”. Pedro Almodóvar called her to play Irene in Volver (2006). The reunion could not have been more satisfactory –Goya included for both of them–. Carmen is perfect in her supporting role, almost ghostly, as the mother of Penélope Cruz and Lola Dueñas . Perfect example of the virtue to make people laugh and cry from the most absolute proximity. In recent years, the international market has been interested in these skills and has offered him small roles in Zona libre (2006) by Amos Gitai and Tetro (2009), by Francis Ford Coppola .. On the small screen, however, she has chosen to bring the foreign to national soil with her work in the Spanish version of the successful North American television series Las chicas de oro .

During all these years of work Carmen has had time to experience another setback in love. If she lost her children after her first relationship, in a later courtship she lost all her money. Plucked by her partners, Carmen confesses that she thought on several occasions that something was wrong with her. Now time has passed and the actress enjoys her children and her only granddaughter. She continues to be warm, simple, like hers Irene de Volver. He ambitions few things and less in the professional field, where in the meantime so much work has slipped more than one title to forget. But still, “I’ve never wanted to do any role that I wasn’t offered,” she says. In accordance with this philosophy, Carmen continues to work and enjoy as if she were new to all of this; Not even the Gold Medal from the Spanish Film Academy received in 2009 has changed its essence one iota. A seniority from which that tipsy look of a girl who is eager to see the world has never been separated.