Maria Jose Cantudo

María Purificación Josefa Cantudo Porcel, known as María José Cantudo (Andújar, Jaén, July 10, 1951). She is a Spanish actress and showgirl. It had its greatest splendor in the 1970s, where she worked as a presenter on the program ¡Señoras y señores! from TVE.

Biography

Daughter of Antonio Cantudo Padilla, a Renfe employee, and of Araceli Porcel. She was born in Andújar in 1951 (she denies the year, but without indicating the correct one) and grew up in Puente Genil (Córdoba); She was the eldest of four siblings, two boys, Antonio and Jesús, and a woman, Francisca Araceli.During her adolescence, she lived with her family for a time in Almería.

The hotelier Carlos del Val encourages and supports her to embark on an artistic career in Madrid. Her beginnings in 1971-1972 are as an advertising model and photo-novela actress, a genre in which she acquires some popularity. Valerio Lazarov noticed her and hired her to present the television program Ladies and gentlemen! (1974-75), together with Ángela Carrasco.

He began his film career in 1973 with the films Fright rises from the grave and Autopsia, but he achieved his first success under the orders of Jorge Grau in La trastienda (1976), where she starred in the first full-length female nude (seen through a mirror) in Spanish cinema. She was labeled in spite of herself in the uncovering genre and continued to work, among others, with Antonio Mercero (Las delicias de los verdes años, 1976), again with Grau (The unspeakable secret of a good boy, 1976), José Luis Merino (Marcada por los hombres, 1976), León Klimovsky (Kidnapping, 1976), Jacinto Molina (The Frenchman's Garden, 1977), Tonino Ricci (Passion, 1977), Omiros Efstratiadis (The Ambitious Lover, 1982) and Rafael Villaseñor (Crossed Legs, 1983).

Aware of his few film opportunities (in 1983 he did not pass the tests required by Carlos Saura to star in Carmen), he decided to focus on theater, especially musicals or revues. She has starred in Las Leandras with great success since 1978 and achieved some prestige as an actress or producer of Doña Mariquita de mi corazón (1985), We already have a girl (1991), Mariquilla Terremoto (1996), Ventolera (1999) and El baile, by Edgar Neville (2001).

On television he has participated in the series Eva a las diez, La comedia musical española, Ay, Señor, Señor and Tell me how it happened. She appeared in the Telecinco series La que se avecina playing herself in an episode of the fourth season.

In 1973, she married singer and actor Manolo Otero, father of her only son, Manuel (b. 1974). Separated in 1978, she has been romantically linked to the actor Pedro Ruiz and the artistic businessman Enrique Cornejo.

In 2013, she was appointed an honorary member of UNESCO for her philanthropic work.

In Holy Week 2023 she made her debut as costalera of the Christ of the Alabarderos.

Filmography and television

• 1973 The horror arises from the grave of Carlos Aured
• 1973 Autopsy by Juan Logar
• 1974 The killer's not alone. of Jesús García de Dueñas
• 1974 The Last Process in Paris of José Canalejas
• 1974 Seven jackals de José Luis Madrid
• 1975 The Unfaithful Secret of a Good Boy by Jorge Grau
• 1975 Vögel's cheerful vampires of Julio Pérez Tabernero
• 1976 Move it. by Jorge Grau
• 1976 Uniform ladies of Luis María Delgado
• 1976 The delights of the green years of Antonio Mercero
• 1976 The children of... Luis María Delgado
• 1976 Marked by men by José Luis Merino Boves
• 1976 Kidnapping of Leon Klimovsky
• 1977 The French garden by Paul Naschy
• 1977 Passion of Tonino Ricci
• 1980 The Women of Jeremiah of Tito Fernández
• 1982 The ambitious lover of Omiros Efstratiadis
• 1982 The bingo girls of Julián Esteban
• 1983 Artificial Insemination of Arturo Martínez
• 1983 Cross legs of Rafael Villaseñor
• 1983 Blood in the Caribbean of Rafael Villaseñor
• 1988 Campanadas en TVE desde México
• 2001 Tell me how it happened.
• 2010 The one that's coming

Published works

• The transtent of an actress (2016). ISBN 9788496613928