Celebrity Biographies
Terele Pavez
She is remembered above all as Régula, the mother of a family of peasants who goes through all kinds of hardships to get ahead, in “Los santos inocentes”, her most prestigious work. Because of her deep voice, it was ideal for characters trying to escape misery. In recent times, she has become a regular in Álex de la Iglesia’s films in “The Day of the Beast”, “La Comunidad”, “Las brujas de Zugarramurdi” or “El bar”. The popular actress Terele Pávez died on August 11, 2017 in La Paz, a hospital in Madrid, at the age of 79, as a result of a stroke.
Born in Bilbao on June 29, 1939, Teresa Marta Ruiz Penella actually considered herself from Madrid, where she lived almost all her life. She is the daughter of the politician Ramón Ruiz Alonso, involved in the death of the poet Federico García Lorca , she was the sister of two other illustrious interpreters, Elisa Montés and Emma Penella . When she debuted in what would be her profession forever, they had already achieved her success, so to distinguish herself from them she decided to use the second surname of her maternal grandmother, Pávez.
At the age of twelve, she was already shooting her first film, Novio a la vista , by Luis García Berlanga , after Jesús Franco , a friend of her relatives, got her the role. He himself would direct it in We are 18 years old , with her sisters he shared the screen in 1963 in The fourth window , by Julio Coll.
Paired for a long time with the Gipuzkoan painter Rafael Ruiz Balerdi, who painted her in several of his works, she had her only child, Carolo, with the publisher José Benito Alique. She lavished herself on the stage, in productions such as “La casa de las Chivas”, with enormous repercussions. Her face became very popular for her television series on the Transition, such as La barraca or Cañas y barro .
His greatest recognition came in 1953, when Mario Camus offered him one of the leading roles in Los santos inocentes , an adaptation of the novel by Miguel Delibes . After this feature film, he lavished himself on the big screen, in titles such as Requiem for a Spanish peasant , by Francesc Betriu , Winter Diary , by Francisco Regueiro , or El Lute II, tomorrow I will be free , by Vicente Aranda . She was also the famous pimp of La Celestina , in the film by Gerardo Vera. However, she was soon relegated to ostracism, as the opinion that she was a troubled woman, difficult to deal with, was widespread among the producers.
Álex de la Iglesia recovers it for The Day of the Beast , which consecrated the man from Bilbao. In the film, she explored her comic vision, hitherto unpublished, as a widow who kept a photo of the coup leader Antonio Tejero. Since then she has become a fetish for the director, who made her jump off rooftops, chasing Carmen Maura in La comunidad , made her a sorceress in Las brujas de Zugarramurdi , a role for which she won the Goya for best secondary, distrustful wife of a veterinarian in Sad Trumpet Ballad , or owner of the establishment of El bar . On television she had been “the other grandmother”, mother of Antonio Alcántara, in the successful series Tell me how it happened .