María Valverde stars in the premiere this week of Madrid, 1987, David Trueba?s latest film, with Valverde co-staring with José Sacristán
Just turned 25, she is one of the most promising young actresses in Spanish cinema today. María made her debut aged 16 together with Galician actor
Luis Tosar in the drama
La flaqueza del bolchevique (The Weakness of the Bolshevik), directed by
Manuel Martín Cuenca. Thanks to this role she won the Goya for Best New Actress, and this award opened many doors for her.
She made the most of these opportunities with intelligence and maturity, accepting roles in films like
Fuera del cuerpo (Body Confusion), Vorvik and the controversial Hispano-Italian film
Melissa P, based on the erotic diaries published in Italy by a teenager called Melissa Panarello. She also played Lucretia Borgia in the successful blockbuster about the famous Italian family directed by
Antonio Hernández in 2006.
After that she co-starred in
Ladrones (Thieves) together with
Juanjo Ballesta; in
El hombre de arena (The Sandman), with
Hugo Silva, and in
The Anarchist?s Wife with
Juan Diego Botto. In 2010, during the shooting of
La mula (The Mule) she met the man who is her current partner, actor Mario Casas. He had just been chosen to star in
3 metros sobre el cielo (Three Steps Above Heaven), the film adaptation of the best-selling Italian novel by Federico Moccia.
Mario persuaded
María to audition too and she was offered the role of Babi, a young girl from an upper-middle-class family who falls in love with a rebel from the wrong side of the tracks, played by Mario. The film, directed by Fernando González Molina, was a success at the box-office when it was released in 2010 and in fact became the hit film of the year.
In June we?ll be able to see the sequel,
Tengo ganas de tí (I Want You). In the meantime,
María is starring in
Madrid 1987, the latest film by
David Trueba, sharing the billing with veteran actor
José Sacristán, and has made her TV debut in the Telecinco series La fuga, a prison drama in which she plays a woman desperate to get her husband out of jail.
