Marisa Paredes

Born on April 3, 1946, María Luisa Paredes Bartolomé from Madrid showed a great vocation for acting from a very young age. In fact, at the age of fourteen she was already getting on stage, as meritorious, in “Esta noche ni” by the Conchita Montes company.

In the cinema he began as a secondary school in typically Spanish comedies such as Los economically weak or Carlos’s aunt in a miniskirt . She began to gain notoriety on the small screen, in the legendary program “Estudio 1”, which adapted plays, and in other very popular spaces such as “Teatro de siempre”, “Novela”, Los camioneros and Ficciones .

However, in the 1980s, and despite being a first-rate actress, she fell somewhat into oblivion. “I consider that I had a stage of authentic popularity, perhaps increased by television, where I worked a lot. But it is unfair that a twenty-two-year-old actress – as was my case – is taken and convinced that she has a bright future, a successful image is believed that after a moment is not maintained, ”said the actress.

In the cinema, Fernando Trueba turned to her for a small role in his debut, Opera prima , while Pedro Almodóvar also offered her a supporting role, as a nun in Entre tinieblas . She also appeared in the films Tata mía , Cara de acelga or Tras el cristal , the disturbing debut in the feature film by Agustí Villaronga , where she was the wife of a Nazi doctor.

But her true launch came at the age of 45, when she meets Pedro Almodóvar again, who bets heavily on her, in Tacones lejanos , where she was a woman marked by her tortuous relationship with the male gender, who abandoned her daughter ( Victoria Abril ) to dedicate herself to the show. In her maturity, Marisa Paredes is even a better actress, if possible, than before, and she establishes herself as one of the great Spanish figures of the moment. She stood out especially in the unforgettable sequence in which she sang “Piensa en mí”, although she was dubbed by the singer Luz Casal. He owes fame to La Mancha, but as Pilar Miró said “Almodóvar also owes a lot to this great actress”.

From that moment on, his services were requested by renowned Spanish filmmakers such as Gonzalo Suárez ( The Anonymous Queen ), and also foreigners, such as the Frenchman Philippe Lioret , who gave him the leading role in In transit , the Chilean established in France Raoul Ruiz who she gave a role with Marcello Mastroianni in Trois vies & une seule mort , or the Mexican Arturo Ripstein , who got a lot out of her as a secondary in Profundo crimesí and as the wife of the protagonist in El colonel no tiene que le scribe . Another great Mexican director, Guillermo del Toro, made her the director of an orphanage in The Devil’s Backbone . As far as foreign directors are concerned, Marisa Paredes’ peak was working with Roberto Benigni in La vida es bella , where she played Dora’s mother, the woman who dazzled the protagonist.

On a personal level, Marisa Paredes was close to the prestigious filmmaker Antonio Isasi-Isasmendi , with whom she worked on the film El perro . They both had a daughter, María Isasi , who followed in her footsteps as an actress of her mother, and who became popular with the series Amor en tiempos revueltos . She later joined the film man José María Prado, director of the Spanish Film Library.

The actress did one of her best jobs as a writer of pink novels tormented by her marital crisis in La flor de mi secreto , again under the orders of Almodóvar, who also used her as a secondary in Todo sobre mi madre and La piel que habito . She was also the protagonist of Salvajes , Carlos Molinero ‘s debut , where she became the long-suffering aunt of young skinheads. Curiously, her only female niece was Maria Isasi, her own daughter.

She had to be president of the Film Academy in the hardest years, when the controversy broke out because the delivery of the Goyas completely became a demand for “No to war”, as a protest against the invasion of Iraq. She resigned in 2003, due to professional commitments.

In addition to starring with other great Spanish actresses – Verónica Forqué , Carmen Maura and Mercedes Sampietro – in the film Reinas , about the relationship of several mothers with their homosexual children, Marisa Paredes was the queen of Spain in the miniseries Felipe and Leticia: duty and love , which sparked some controversy, among other things due to his somewhat cartoonish interpretation of Doña Sofía – not so much as that of Juanjo Puigcorbé as Juan Carlos I.