Marisa Paredes

Artistically adventurous Spanish actress Marisa Paredes has worked with a number of renowned international directors during her career, but she is most famous for her work with Spain's flamboyant Pedro Almodóvar. Madrid native Paredes was studying acting at the city's Dramatic Arts Conservatory when she began her professional career in the 1960s. Making her name as an actress in Spanish TV, stage, and film work during the 1960s and '70s, Paredes began to attract more international attention in the 1980s. After appearing in Sus Anos Dorados (1980) and Fernando Trueba's comedy Opera Prima (1980), Paredes starred in her first Almodóvar film, the ribald comedy Dark Habits (1984). Among her other 1980s work, Paredes earned the Onda Madrid Prize for her performance as the wife of a Nazi concentration camp doctor in Tras El Cristal (1985). Paredes earned more acting laurels as the unbalanced actress and potential murderess Becky in Almodóvar's High Heels (1991). Solidifying her international prominence, Paredes worked in French, Mexican, and Italian productions, as well as Spanish, throughout the 1990s. After acting with Philippe Loiret in Tombes du Ciel (1993), Paredes starred as a troubled pulp romance writer in Almodóvar's The Flower of My Secret (1995). Paredes starred as Marcello Mastroianni's ex-wife in innovative Chilean expat Raoul Ruiz's comedy Three Lives and Only One Death (1996); appeared in Mexican director Arturo Ripstein's florid crime drama Deep Crimson (1996), based on the same story as The Honeymoon Killers (1969); and played Roberto Benigni's mother-in-law in the Oscar winning Holocaust dramedy Life is Beautiful (1997). After adding a U.S. production to her credits with Talk of Angels (1998), Paredes once again made a colorful role even more so with her passionate turn as diva actress Huma Rojo in Almodóvar's critically hailed, award-winning drama All About My Mother (1999). Though it did not draw as much attention, Paredes also won kudos that same year in Arturo Ripstein's No One Writes to the Colonel (1999). Paredes' consistent excellence earned her Spain's National Film Award in 1996. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide