Mabel Rivera

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Mabel Rivera (2013)

Mabel Rivera (* 20th June 1952 in Ferrol , A Coruna Province as María Isabel Rivera Torres ) is a Spanish actress .

biography

Mabel Rivera was born in 1952 as María Isabel Rivera Torres in Galicia , in northwestern Spain. She worked as a shipyard worker in her hometown for eleven years before studying English at the University of Santiago de Compostela , which she graduated in 1984. Rivera started acting in the 1970s, but did not make her professional theatrical debut until 1984 at the Centro Dramático Galego (CDG) in Santiago de Compostela, where she appeared in Eduardo Alonso's production of Roberto Vidal Bolaño's play Agasallo de sombras . Alonso put it then in other CDG-productions and followed Castelãos Os vellos non deben de namorarse (1985) and roles in classic comedies like The Imaginary Invalid (1986) by Molière and The Merry Wives of Windsor (1989) by William Shakespeare . In 1990 the 1.74 m tall actress acted under the direction of Fernanda Lapa in Phillippe Minyana's play Inventarios at the Teatro do Malbarate . A year later she was awarded the Premio Compostela for best theater actress for this performance . In the mid-1990s Rivera was also seen in contemporary pieces such as Sam Sheppard's Fool for love (1995), which she translated into Galician with Cándido Pazó . As an assistant director she worked under Xulio Lago and Lino Braxe on José Sanchi's Sinisterra O Cerco de Leningrado (Teatro do Atlántico, 1999) and the Lagarta, Lagarta production Fobias (2004).

Parallel to her work in the Galician theater, Mabel Rivera made her film debut in 1987 with the small part as Señora Gundín in José Luis Cuerda's award-winning fantasy comedy El bosque animado , in which Alfredo Landa played the leading role. In the late 1980s, Rivera followed offers for various television productions from TVE and the Galician television station TVG , including Xosé Cermeños and Antón Dobaos comedy series Os outros feirantes (1989). However, it was not until 1995 that she became known to a wide audience through the leading role of Balbina Santos in Cermeños Pratos combinados . The popular comedy series was broadcast regularly at prime time on TVG until 2003 and was always about the misfortunes of a Galician family who runs a bar and dreams of financial independence. Rivera embodied the part of the meek wife in several seasons and brought her three times in a row a nomination for the AGAPI television award .

The trained comedian studied acting at the University of Santiago de Compostela from 1999 to 2001 and appeared in the short film Inútil by Paco Rañal in the year of her graduation . In 2004, Rivera returned to the big screen seventeen years after her feature film debut with Alejandro Amenábar's The Sea in Me . In the drama, based on a true story, she appears as the brusque and self-sacrificing sister-in-law of the paralyzed Galician Ramón Sampedro (played by Javier Bardem ). This had gained notoriety in Spain through his years of struggle for the right to active euthanasia. For the role of Manuela, Rivera, like the rest of the acting ensemble around Bardem, Lola Dueñas and Belén Rueda, received high praise from the critics. While Amenábar's film won the Oscar for best foreign language film in 2005, Rivera was awarded the most important Spanish film prize, the Goya , for best supporting actress in the same year . At the award ceremony , the Galician actress, who was previously little known in Spain, was able to prevail against such established professional colleagues as Victoria Abril ( El séptimo día ) or Mercedes Sampietro ( Inconscientes ). Through this success Rivera received further engagements for feature film productions and in 2006 she again belonged to the acting ensemble of Miloš Forman's historical drama Goyas Geister (2006) alongside Javier Bardem, Natalie Portman and Stellan Skarsgård . A year later, Belén Rueda and Geraldine Chaplin were again her film partners in Juan Antonio Bayona's horror film The Orphanage , Spain's 2008 Oscar nomination for a nomination in the category Best Foreign Language Film .

The actress, who speaks Spanish, Galician and Catalan as well as English and French, worked alongside her film and theater career, among other things, as a presenter.

Filmography (selection)

Awards (selection)

Goya

Further

Premios ACE

  • 2005: Nominated for Best Supporting Actress for The Sea in Me

Premios AGAPI

  • 1997: nominated as best leading actress for Pratos combinados
  • 1998: Nominated as best leading actress for Pratos combinados
  • 1999: Nominated for Best Actress for Pratos combinados

Premios del Círculo de Escritores Cinematográficos

  • 2005: Nominated for Best Supporting Actress for The Sea in Me

Premios Sant Jordi

  • 2005: Best supporting actress for The Sea in Me

Premios Unión de Actores

  • 2005: Nominated for Best Supporting Actress in a Movie for The Sea in Me

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ cf. Interview in El País , November 22, 2006, Galicia Edición, Única, p. 73
personal data
SURNAME Rivera, Mabel
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Rivera Torres, María Isabel (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Spanish actress
DATE OF BIRTH June 20, 1952
PLACE OF BIRTH Ferrol , A Coruña, Galicia