In memoriam: Marisa Paredes (Telegraph 19/12/24)

Marisa Paredes, who has died from heart failure aged 78, was a graceful yet game Spanish actress who found international fame as a foundational part of the Pedro Almodóvar ensemble, earning plaudits for her lead role in The Flower of My Secret (1995) and essaying headstrong women in several of the director’s other titles.

Paredes had been acting on stage and screen for two decades when punky newcomer Almodóvar cast her as Sister Estiércol, one of a convent of wayward nuns sheltering a fugitive nightclub singer in Dark Habits (1983); this was the director’s third feature and the kind of knowing provocation by which cash-strapped young filmmakers often announce themselves. 

Sister Estiércol (or “Sister Manure”, as translated) was both a murderer and LSD devotee; still, as reframed by a wimple, Paredes’ lofty beauty almost dignified the more lurid narrative developments. Only almost, though: Dark Habits eventually wound up premiering out of competition at Venice after the festival’s organising committee decried it as blasphemous.

As Almodóvar moved in from the post-Franco fringes to become an acclaimed pillar of the arthouse circuit, he found less abrasive means of showcasing Paredes’ virtuosity. Though latter-day screwball High Heels (1991) prompted raucous laughs, its most memorable scene found Paredes, as firebrand chanteuse Becky del Páramo, passionately lip-synching to the Mexican torch song “Piensa en Mi”.

 

The Flower of My Secret, meanwhile, felt like the first shoots of a new, mature Almodóvar. Loosely inspired by Dorothy Parker’s The Lovely Leave, it too was capable of irreverent wit, but its narrative – charting the struggles of a mass-market romance novelist approaching middle age – was presented with abundant sincerity. Paredes’ star turn, for one, was nothing if not heartfelt, earning her a Goya nomination for Best Actress.

Almodóvar returned to Paredes, albeit thereafter in supporting roles. She was the lesbian actress who kickstarts the plot of the much-laurelled All About My Mother (1999) and cameoed in the scarcely less feted Talk to Her (2002), before assuming a Mrs. Danvers-like froideur as mad scientist Antonio Banderas’s black-clad PA in The Skin I Live In (2011). Each time, Almodóvar insisted, Paredes offered total commitment: “Marisa placed absolute trust in me and gave me everything.”

Marisa Luisa Paredes Bartolomé was born in Madrid on April 3, 1946, the fourth child of a doorman whom the actress later claimed routinely mistreated her. She left school aged eleven to work, but entertained hopes of acting, lent credence by the proximity of the Teatro Español, two minutes’ walk from the family home.

Despite making an uncredited film debut in Police Calling 091/091, policía al habla (1960), Paredes struggled to persuade her father to let her pursue similar work; indeed, aged fifteen, she briefly went on hunger strike. Her protest paid off: she debuted on stage later that year in José López Rubio’s farce Esta noche, tampoco at Madrid’s Teatro de la Comedia.

While in her teens, Paredes was introduced to the Spanish polymath Fernando Fernán Gómez, three decades her senior, who became her first love and cast her in his much-admired melodrama Life Goes On/El Mundo sigue (1965). Yet Paredes largely established herself through televised stage work: “I was lucky, because I don’t look Spanish. When television was cultured and broadcast theatre, I played out all the dramas of Chekhov, Dostoyevsky, Ibsen…”

Following her Almodóvarian successes, Paredes was often cast as grandes dames or divas: Sarah Bernhardt in the period drama Off Season (1992), a businesswoman in Raúl Ruiz’s Three Lives and Only One Death (1996), a snobby socialite in the divisive Life is Beautiful (1997). She expanded into English-language period drama with Talk of Angels (1998) and Mexican cinema via Deep Crimson (1996) and The Devil’s Backbone (2001).

Between 2000 and 2003, Paredes served as President of the Spanish Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, using her platform to criticise the centre-right Aznar government’s support for the Iraq war. She continued to combine acting with activism: earlier this year, she spoke at a pro-Palestinian rally and shot the road movie Emergency Exit (2025 tbc). Upon receiving an honorary Goya in 2018, she noted her profession “demands approaching with absolute rigour and seriousness. It requires dedication, courage, strength, not being defeated by discouragement.”

Paredes was briefly married to the writer-director Antonio Isasi-Isasmendi; she is survived by their daughter, the actress María Isasi, and by her partner of forty years, José María Prado, the former director of the Spanish National Film Library.

Marisa Paredes, born April 3, 1946, died December 17, 2024.