Carmen Maura, born in 1946, Spanish actress, born in Madrid and educated at the University of Madrid. Maura was the proprietor of a small art gallery in Madrid when she decided, at age 25, to become an actress. She acted with Los Goliardos, an avant-garde theatre group and part of Madrid's underground popular culture movement, where she met Pedro Almodóvar in 1976. Almodóvar cast her in his first movie, Pepi, Luci, Bom (1980), an underground film and the only Almodóvar film to date not released in the United States. An intense working relationship followed; Maura starred in five more Almodóvar films, Dark Habits (1983), released in the United States in 1988; What Have I Done to Deserve This?, a success in Spain before being released in the United States (1985); Matador (1986), Spain's third-highest grossing film that year behind Law of Desire; and 1988's nominee for best foreign film, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. Maura became Spain's most popular actress and was compared to Anna Magnani, Jeanne Moreau, and Irene Papas. Although Almodóvar had called her the perfect actress for him, he did not use her in his next two films, and she worked with Spain's most established director, Carlos Saura, on Ay, Carmela!, for which Maura won the 1990 best actress Felix Award, the European equivalent of the Oscar.
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