Chinese postcard. Cecilia Roth, Marisa Paredes and Penelope Cruz in Todo sobre mi madre / All About My Mother (Pedro Almodóvar, 1999).

Yesterday, Tuesday 17 December 2024, Spanish actress Marisa Paredes (1946-2024) died in Madrid from heart failure. She was a legend of Spanish cinema and acted in 75 films. She will be best remembered for the five films she starred in directed by Pedro Almodóvar. Paredes was 78.

Marisa Paredes was born María Luisa Paredes Bartolomé, in Madrid in 1946. She was a janitor's daughter and said her upbringing, close to the city’s renowned, centuries-old Teatro Español, had inspired her desire to act. She made her big screen debut at the age of 14 in Police Calling 091 (José María Forqué, 1960) and became a teen idol across Spain. In 1961, she made her début in theatre and since then she has performed in many plays. She appeared briefly in Fernando Fernán Gómez's masterpiece El mundo sigue/ Life Goes On (1965) but cut her teeth performing in classic theatre, Chekhov, Dostoevsky and Ibsen televised by public broadcaster RTVE.

Marisa Paredes began working with Almodóvar when she starred as a nun in his dark comedy Entre Tinieblas / Dark Habits (1983) about a cabaret singer who finds refuge in a convent of eccentric nuns. Paredes went on to appear in Tacones lejanos / High Heels (1991) with Victoria Abril, La flor de mi secreto / The Flower of My Secret (1995), Todo sobre mi madre / All About My Mother (1999), and La piel que habito / The Skin I Live in (2011) with Antonio Banderas. It cemented her reputation as one of his trusted and treasured collaborators. Of these films, she thought she turned in one of her career-best performances in The Flower of My Secret, for which she was nominated for the Best Actress Goya Award. The film marks the beginning of Almodóvar’s return to his roots and the world of his mother, a re-connection which continues to this day. In The Flower of My Secret, Paredes played a chic romantic novelist seemingly at first a fish out of water in the village where she was born.

Marisa Paredes worked with several of Spain’s classic modern directors, beginning with Fernando Trueba in his debut Opera Prima (1980), in a role which ribbed her air of grand dame, showing her sense of humour. Later came starring roles, most notably in the controversial Horror film Tras el cristal / In a Glass Cage (Agustí Villaronga, 1986) mixing Nazism, paedophilia, torture, and homosexuality. Paredes also appeared in Roberto Benigni’s acclaimed comedy-drama La vita è bella / Life is Beautiful (1997), which won three Oscars. She starred in the Mexican films Profundo Carmesi / Deep Crimson (Arturo Ripstein, 1996) and El coronel no tiene quien le escriba / No One Writes to the Colonel (Arturo Ripstein, 1999) Another highlight was the Horror film El espinazo del diablo / The Devil’s Backbone (Guillermo del Toro, 2001) with Eduardo Noriega, set during the Spanish civil war. Between 2000 and 2003, Paredes served as the president of the film academy, which bestowed an honorary Goya award on her six years ago. Paredes is survived by her decades-long partner Chema Prado, a former head of the Filmoteca Española. In the 1970s, she had a domestic partnership of about 7 years with filmmaker Antonio Isasi-Isasmendi, whom with she had one daughter, María Isasi.

Sources: Sam Jones (The Guardian), John Hopewell (Variety), Wikipedia and IMDb.

Tags:   Marisa Paredes Marisa Paredes Spanish Actress Euoprean Film Star Cecilia Roth Cecilia Roth Penelope Cruz Penelope Cruz Todo sobre mi madre 1999 Pedro Almadóvar Vintage Postcard R.I.P.

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