The famous Spanish actress Marisa Paredes, who notably starred in 6 feature films by filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar, has passed away at the age of 78.
She was one of the muses of the Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar, with whom she had made 6 films, including High Heels, All About My Mother and Talk to Her. Spanish actress Marisa Paredes died on December 17 at the age of 78, announced the Iberian media.
A great lady of Spanish cinema
The last of a family of four children, Marisa Paredes was born in Santa Ana Square, Madrid's theater district. Against the wishes of her father, a worker, she launched into comedy, entering the Conservatory at the age of 15 and, following the withdrawal of an actress, debuted on stage in 1961 in Not tonight either by José López Rubio.
Moreover, it was the theater, which she never really abandoned despite her success in the cinema, which made her known. Starring in a large number of films in the 70s and 80s (including Trueba's Opera Prima and the very disturbing Tras el cristal), in 1988 she received a Goya nomination for Best Supporting Role for her performance in Cara by acelga.
In 1983, in the middle of Movida, the actress played an eccentric nun in Into Darkness, the first in a long series of collaborations between her and Pedro Almodóvar. Indeed, the filmmaker made her, throughout the 90s, the heroine of his melodramas, offering her beautiful roles as divas in crisis, between professional success and intimate dramas.
Bestimage Marisa Paredes
Cult actress at Pedro Almodóvar
Marisa Paredes thus acquired international popularity thanks to the character of Becky, singer and mother of Victoria Abril in High Heels (1992), before playing a depressive novelist in The Flower of My Secret (a performance which earned her the Interpretation Prize at Karlovy Vary in 1995), then an adored actress in All About My Mother (1999), a role written especially for her.
The Spanish director continued to direct her over the following decade in Speak with Her (2002) and La Piel que Habito (2011).
Having become one of the most popular actresses in Latin cinema, Marisa Paredes multiplies the films outside the Spanish borders and plays, among others, the mother of Nicoletta Braschi in La Vie est belle by Benigni, the wife of Mastroianni in Trois vies et une only death of the Chilean Raoul Ruiz and also toured with the Mexican Arturo Ripstein (No letter for the colonel).
The actress nevertheless continues to film in Spain, from the disturbing The Devil's Back (2001) to the delirious Reinas (2005), which sees her rub shoulders with other Almodovarian muses, such as Carmen Maura or Veronica Forque.
The same year, she played a nun under the direction of the prolific Manoel de Oliveira in The Magic Mirror, alongside Michel Piccoli.
In 2007, the comedy Four Last Songs (unreleased in France) allowed him to join an international cast including Stanley Tucci, Rhys Ifans and Emmanuelle Seigner.
Also very popular in France (she played in 1993 in Tombés du ciel, the first comedy by Philippe Lioret), she distinguished herself in 2010 in Gigola alongside Lou Doillon, but also her compatriots Eduardo Noriega and Rossy de Palma.
She then joined the four-star cast of Les Yeux de sa Mère (2011) by film buff Thierry Klifa, alongside Catherine Deneuve and Géraldine Pailhas. Recently, the actress starred in Despite Everything, visible on Netflix, and in the series Vestidas de Azul. Marisa Paredes died on December 17, 2024 at the age of 78.
