Carmen maura

María del Carmen García y Maura (Madrid, September 15, 1945), better known as Carmen Maura, is a Spanish actress. She has developed her career both in her native country and in France and Mexico, with great success in all three, which has earned her four Goya awards –a record equaled only by Verónica Forqué– and a César Award for French cinema, as well as of the award for best actress at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival. For years she was the actress with the most awards from the European Film Academy (1988 and 1990), an honor that she currently shares with actresses Isabelle Huppert, Juliette Binoche and Charlotte Rampling.

Some of the most important films in which he has been involved are What have I done to deserve this?, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, Oh, Carmela!, Be unfaithful and don't look with whom, The community, 800 bullets, Back , The girls of the sixth floor or The witches of Zugarramurdi.

She is also known for being the first actress to be professionally linked to famous Spanish film director Pedro Almodóvar, being the first to be nicknamed "almodóvar girl". Following her memorable works and her extensive career, she is considered by the media and critics as one of the great actresses of Europe.

Carmen Maura is part of the Maura dynasty. She is the great-granddaughter of Bartolomé Maura y Montaner, a well-known engraver of her time and brother of the politician Antonio Maura y Montaner (therefore, Jorge Semprún's third niece).

Biography

Early Years

Carmen Maura was born on September 15, 1945 at 6 am in the Chamberí neighborhood of Madrid, the daughter of Salvador García Santa-Cruz, an ophthalmologist, and María del Carmen Maura e Arenzana, granddaughter of both the counts from Fuente Nueva de Arenzana and from Bartolomé Maura y Montaner. Being the second daughter of the 4 of the marriage. In her early years, she had the playwright and writer Edgar Neville and the actress Conchita Montes as her neighbors in her house on Rafael Calvo street. She began her first studies at the San José de Cluny school in Madrid, to later graduate with the title of simultaneous interpreter of French and the career of French Letters from the Catholic Institute of Paris based in Madrid. She studied philosophy and literature at the National School of Fine Arts in Paris.

Carmen Maura at 3 years

In 1966 she married the lawyer Francisco Forteza Pujol and had two children, María del Carmen (1967) and Pablo (1970). During this time, her husband set up an art gallery for her called Galería Da Vinci and in the downstairs, his law office. They divorced in 1970. Forteza obtained custody of the children and prevented them from having contact with Maura for twelve years, through a legal battle. About that time, she comments that her work was what saved her from going crazy: "In the worse moments, in those in which the anguish is so strong that you want to die, my functions were the only thing in the world that made me happy".

She began acting at the Teatro Español Universitario as an amateur until the moment when theater critic Alfredo Marquerie advised her to dedicate herself entirely to acting given her worth.

Despite not having the support of his family, he works in café-theaters, does small roles on television and does theater tours in independent companies with little resonance. She achieved her first important role replacing Amparo Pamplona in the play There is a light on the bed (1969) and began to appear in the cinema as secondary characters: The murderer is among the thirteen , by Javier Aguirre; A chaste Spanish man, by Jaime de Armiñán; The Petition, by Pilar Miró, etc.

Her first leading film roles are Paper Tigers (1977) and What is a girl like you doing in a place like this? (1978), both by Fernando Colomo.

In 1977, she starred in the theatrical production Dirty Hands, by Jean-Paul Sartre, along with José Luis Pellicena and Enrique Diosdado and met Pedro Almodóvar, who played a small role. His great friendship and professional understanding paid off over the next decade. First in short films, medium-length films and minor collaborations such as Fuck, fuck, fuck me Tim, until Maura stars in the first feature film directed by Almodóvar, Pepi, Luci, Bom and other ordinary girls. Filming lasted more than a year due to technical and financial difficulties, but it was finally released in commercial theaters, garnering criticism and praise.

The audience of the Madrid movement felt identified and turned the film into the banner of the social movement of the eighties and was presented at the San Sebastián International Film Festival. Despite the fact that the general public regarded Pedro Almodóvar as a modern runaway and much of the critics viewed him with some suspicion, Pedro had his first success with his people, those who had participated in the film, some of them very close to him. the move, such as the singer Alaska. His freedom when it came to showing compromised topics such as drugs or sex made it very difficult for him to start taking him seriously in the cinema.

In 2015, she publicly acknowledged that at the age of thirty she was the victim of a sexual assault, "she was raped by a soldier and her description of the general mistreatment of women and by the police recalls a not so distant time of chilling machismo in in which a woman was treated almost as the culprit by the authorities after being raped. or he had to suffer the heartbreak of losing his children to fulfill his vocation." After the rapist left his apartment, he called a very close friend, told him what had happened and said: "I I don't want to be sexually traumatized for the rest of my life, so come and let's get laid, very soft, without a hint of violence, very affectionate".

Fame in the 1980s

As a result of her television collaborations as an actress, she had the opportunity to meet the late journalist Fernando García Tola, who hired her to work on the interview program Esta noche. With this program she became known among the Spanish public in the eighties and starred in the famous phrase that Tola addressed to Maura: & # 34; Baby, you are worth a lot & # 34;. In film and on television, she continued to perform her work as an actress, both dramatic in El crimen de la calle Fuencarral of the series La huella del crimen or as a comedian in El Cid cabreador, both by filmmaker Angelino Fons.

In the mid-1980s, Pedro Almodóvar trusted Carmen again for his film Entre tinieblas, a risky and controversial film in religious aspects in which he worked with actresses such as Julieta Serrano, Marisa Paredes, Berta Riaza or Chus Lampreave. And a few years later, Carmen and Pedro premiered What have I done to deserve this?, a film that also had the collaboration of actors such as Ángel de Andrés López, Chus Lampreave, Gonzalo Suárez, Amparo Soler Leal and Verónica Forqué, among others. In it, Carmen Maura was able to give one of the most successful interpretations of her in the cinema and from that moment on, Carmen and Pedro became the most prolific director-actress couple in Spanish cinema par excellence. Pedro's success reached the mainstream public and they began to look at him with different eyes and international success began to rear its head. Carmen received different national awards for her interpretation, among which the Fotogramas de Plata for the best film actress, voted by readers, stands out.

Almodovar in 1988.

Carmen and Pedro made three more films until the end of the 1980s: Matador, a rare suspense film in which they played a supporting role alongside Nacho Martínez, Assumpta Serna and Antonio Banderas; The Law of Desire, a risky, free and transgressive film that showed homosexuality clearly and without prejudice for the first time, where Carmen played the role of a transsexual, alongside Eusebio Poncela and Antonio Banderas as protagonists; and finally, the top film by the Almodóvar-Maura duo, the crazy comedy Women on the verge of a nervous breakdown , in which Carmen once again dazzled the public and critics with her interpretation. The film was a true triumph and its success skyrocketed both in Spain and abroad, even becoming a candidate for the Hollywood Academy Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. The film went around the world, winning awards there. wherever it went and the film careers of its actors were launched into resounding success. Carmen won the Goya Academy Award for Best Leading Actress and Felix (European Film Awards) for Best European Actress.

But despite her success alongside Pedro Almodóvar, Carmen Maura also made many other films during the eighties such as Rafael Monleón's Baton Rouge, alongside Victoria Abril and Antonio Banderas; Tata mía by José Luis Borau, with Imperio Argentina, Alfredo Landa and Miguel Rellán; or Be unfaithful and don't look with whom by Fernando Trueba, along with Ana Belén, Antonio Resines, Santiago Ramos, Verónica Forqué and Chus Lampreave. She also had the opportunity to star in the debut of actress and singer Ana Belén with the film How to be a woman and not die trying , based on the novel by Carmen Rico Godoy.

The fantastic professional relationship between Almodóvar and Maura disintegrated and broke up for reasons that were not very clear and until 2006, with the film Volver, they did not work together again.

Oh, Carmela!, the community and Coppola

Carmen continued to prove her talent in the 1990s, and her work in many other film jobs earned her many more hits. To begin with, in 1990, after her recent break with Almodóvar, she starred in the film ¡Ay, Carmela! by Carlos Saura, along with Andrés Pajares and Gabino Diego. Set during the Spanish civil war, this film was Carmen's other great triumph along with Mujeres al borde.... She again received awards here and there, among them again the Goya and the Felix. The film was considered the best in Saura's cinema and broke a record in the history of the Goya Awards that would last until 2004 with The Sea Inside.

Throughout the decade of the 1990s, Carmen did not stop making feature films both in Spain and abroad, where her prestige had come with great fortune, especially in France, where her work has been highly recognized. to be a candidate for the César Awards (the French "Goya"), as best supporting actress for the film Le bonheur est dans le pré (Joy is in the countryside) and was awarded the title of Knight of Honor of Arts and Letters of France. Her success moved to other countries such as Italy, England and the Latin American area, passing through Chile and Argentina. But even so, she always gave priority to the works that came from Spain.

Despite having a greater predilection for comedies, his dramatic roles were his most accomplished. She played roles such as Mario Camus's Shadows in a Battle (1993) or Antonio Hernández's Lisbon (1999), films for which she was nominated for a Goya as leading actress. But without a doubt, his third great triumph in his career was his role in Álex de la Iglesia's The Community in 2000. In this film he shared a cast with Emilio Gutiérrez Caba, Terele Pávez and Sancho Gracia but above all he faced a difficult leading role that gave her more than satisfaction: her third Goya, the Silver Shell for best actress in San Sebastián, the Fotogramas de Plata, the Actors Union award,...

During the 1990s, he also experimented with other registers in other fields such as theater, from which he had distanced himself from its beginnings. In this field, she worked in France with the play Cirque à deux , and although she also worked on television in the series At eleven at home , with Antonio Resines and Ana Obregón, she always preferred the cinema. In this field he continued working in comedy, his favorite genre, in films such as Reinas by Manuel Gómez Pereira, together with actresses such as Verónica Forqué, Mercedes Sampietro and Marisa Paredes, or Carretera y manta, with Eduardo Noriega and Natalia Verbeke. She, however, did not leave drama aside, a genre in which she made films such as Clara y Elena , with Verónica Forqué and Jorge Sanz; The Promise, by Héctor Carré, together with Ana Fernández; or 25 degrees in winter, a Belgian production that triumphed in Berlin. He also made a period miniseries for TVE based on the work by Vicente Blasco Ibáñez Arroz y tartana, set in 19th-century Valencia XIX and in which he was able to work with Pepe Sancho and Eloy Azorín.

As an active actress in French cinema, Carmen Maura also worked alongside Gérard Depardieu in the thriller Agreed Silence. Among his works abroad, we could highlight the sentimental film by Alejandro Agresti Valentín's Dream (Valentín in Argentina, with Rodrigo Noya and Julieta Cardinali) the Chilean El entusiasmo, together with Maribel Verdú, Zona libre, a film in which he worked with the promising American actress Natalie Portman, or El harem de Madame Osmane, An Israeli production.

In 2006, she starred in the most anticipated reunion of Spanish cinema: Pedro Almodóvar and she got together again on the set of Volver, a film in which she has worked with Penélope Cruz, Blanca Portillo, Lola Dueñas, Yohana Cobo and Chus Lampreave, actresses with whom she shared the award for best female performance at the Cannes Film Festival, apart from other awards, such as her fourth Goya.

Later, she filmed the series Círculo rojo, together with María Adánez, Emilio Gutiérrez Caba and María Botto among others, broadcasting on Antena 3. That same year she was the godmother of the 2007 edition of Madrid de Cine – Spanish Film Screenings, opened by her on June 4 of the same year.

In April 2008, she was summoned by Francis Ford Coppola to take part in his next project, Tetro, replacing Javier Bardem, who had to resign from his role due to scheduling problems. To make this substitution possible, Coppola modified the role intended for Bardem into a female character suitable for Maura. Also, during the changes that he always makes to the script during the filming period, he realized that the character would bring more to the film if she were a woman, instead of a man.

His career is rewarded with the Gold Medal of the Spanish Film Academy which he received in 2009.

Latest works

Her latest works include appearances in The Girls on the Sixth Floor (2010), a film for which she won the French César Award for Supporting Actress, Chicas (2010), directed by the author Yasmina Reza, the directorial debut of actress María Adánez in the short film 5ºB Escalera Dcha (2010), and in the Colombian film Sofía y el terco (2012).

He also participates in several works on television, such as the Spanish version of the mythical series The Golden Girls (2010), Stamos okupa2 (2012) and Carta a Eva (2012), a two-episode miniseries directed by Agustí Villaronga, which reconstructs the trip that Eva Perón made to Spain, once again accompanied by Julieta Cardinali. In 2015 she makes a special collaboration in TVE's Águila Roja , as Olivia, Duchess of Fournier, mentor of Lucrecia de Guzmán, Marquise of Santillana (Miryam Gallego).

In 2011 it was confirmed that she would work again with Álex de la Iglesia in the film Las brujas de Zugarramurdi (2013), a horror comedy set in the present day, which takes its title from the real case for which the Inquisition sentenced some residents of Logroño accused of witchcraft to die at the stake.

In 2013, the San Sebastián International Film Festival awarded her the Donostia Award in recognition of her extensive film career, the first being for a Spanish actress and the fourth for a Spaniard after those of Fernando Fernán Gómez (1999), Francisco Rabal (2001) and Antonio Banderas (2008).

That same year, she returned to the stage to play Carlota in the play of the same name by Miguel Mihura, directed by Mariano de Paco Serrano, at the María Guerrero theater in Madrid, headquarters of the National Dramatic Center. Four years later, she stars in Guillem Clua's theatrical text La golondrina. Later he interpreted it in the theaters of France, under the title of L'hirondelle.

In 2018, she became the protagonist of a documentary about her life and professional career, ¡Ay Carmen! made by Fernando Méndez-Leite. It has the testimonies of Agustín and Pedro Almodóvar, Ana Belén, Fernando Colomo, Álex De La Iglesia, Rossy de Palma, Carla Forteza, Emilio Gutiérrez Caba, Marion Hänsel, Phillippe Le Guay, Eva Lesmes, Paula Ponga, Martin Provost, Antonio Resines and Fernando Trueba, who trace his career. In that year, he received the honorary Lifetime Achievement Award in Seville for his exceptional career during the ceremony of the 31st edition of the European Film Awards granted by the European Film Academy (EFA).

Filmography

Television

Theater

Awards and nominations

Annual Awards

César Awards

Goya Awards

European Film Awards

Silver frames

Awards of the Union of Actors

Medals of the Film Writers Circle

Sant Jordi Film Awards

Silver Condor Awards

Ondas Awards

TP Gold Awards

Mestre Mateo Awards

Festivals

Cannes International Film Festival

San Sebastian International Film Festival

Venice International Film Festival

Locarno International Film Festival

Valladolid International Film Festival

Malaga Spanish Film Festival

La Coruña Film Festival

Monte Carlo Television Festival

Islantilla Film Festival

Other acknowledgments

• Platinum Award of Honor of Ibero-American Film 2022.

• Honorary Prize for a career awarded by the European Film Academy, 2018.

• Kristian Film Festival Award Febiofest as a recognition of its contribution to the 2016 World Film Festival.
• Condecorated with the Grand Cross of the Civil Order of Alfonso X el Sabio 2016.
• Homenaje del Ciclo de Cine Argencine 2013.
• Prize for Culture 2011 of the Community of Madrid for Film and Audiovisual Arts.
• In 2011 he received, together with the actor Jean Reno, the VIII Prix (Prize) Dialogue of the Association of Hispano-Francessa Friendship in recognition of its contribution to the relations between France and Spain in the cultural and film field.
• Star on the Paseo de la Fama de Madrid (2011).
• Grande Medaille de Vermeil de la Ville de Paris (Conceded in 2011).
• Gold Medal of the Film Academy (Conceded in 2009).
• Gold Medal to Merit in the Fine Arts (Granted in 1999).
• Knight of the Order of the Arts and Letters of France (condecor granted in 1996).
• National Film Prize (1988).