Veteran Spanish actor and Almodovar staple Marisa Paredes passes away at 78

Marisa Paredes attends the concert of “Stella Maris”, the musical band that performs on the serie “La mesias” at the Calderon Theatre on January 15, 2024 in Madrid, Spain.
| Photo Credit: Carlos Alvarez

Legendary Spanish actor Marisa Paredes has passed away. She was 78.

As per Variety, Marisa died on Tuesday in Madrid from heart failure. While she acted in 75 movies, she will be best remembered for the five films she starred in directed by Pedro Almodovar: Dark Habits (1983), High Heels (1991), The Flower of My Secret (1995), All About My Mother (1999) and The Skin I Live In (2011).

Of all these, she thought she turned in one of her career-best performances in The Flower of My Secret, which marks the beginning of Almodovar’s return to his roots and world of his mother, a re-connection which continues to this day.

In The Flower of My Secret, Paredes played a chic romantic novelist seemingly at first a fish out of water in the village where she was born.

She acted Spain’s classic modern directors, beginning with Fernando Trueba in his 1980 debut Opera Prima, in a role which ribbed her air of grand dame, showing her sense of humor.

Later came starring roles, most notably in in Agusti Villaronga’s In a Glass Cage, (1986) but also Mexican Arturo Ripstein’s Deep Crimson (1996) and No One Writes to the Colonel (1999) and Guillermo del Toro’s The Devil’s Backbone (2001).