Irene Visedo Herrero (born 16 July 1978) is a Spanish actress who became popular in Spain for her performance as Inés Alcántara in the TV series Cuéntame cómo pasó.
Biography
Born in Madrid on 16 July 1978.[1] She started training as an actress when she was 14 years old, although her first chance at a feature film did not come until she was 18, with a performance in El ángel de la Guarda (1996).[2][3]
Visedo's first leading role in a film came with Cascabel (2000),[2] a coming-of-age story of two friends (Cascabel and Luz) who want to leave their past behind and succeed in the world of music.[4] Her performance won her the Best New Actress Award at the Toulouse's Cinespaña Film Festival.[2][5]
She starred in Guillermo del Toro's El Espinazo del Diablo (The Devil's Backbone), a 2001 Spanish-Mexican gothic horror film where she played Conchita, a young teacher.[6][7] She also played the role of Mónica Erigaray in Los pasos perdidos (The Lost Steps), a Spanish-Argentine production also released in 2001.[6][8]
Visedo joined the cast of the new drama series Cuéntame cómo pasó (originally set in 1968), aired on La 1 since 2001.[9] She played the character of Inés Alcántara, the older sibling of the Alcántara family, a "nonconformist spirit" who originally worked as hairdresser.[9][10] The role marked her artistic career and earned her popularity.[11]
She starred together with Hugo Silva and María Valverde in El hombre de arena (2007), a love story set in an inverosimile location (a Francoist psychiatric hospital in Extremadura),[12] and where she played the role of Carmen, a doctor seeking to reform the institution.[13] In 2007, after more than one hundred episodes, Visedo decided to leave Cuéntame and to focus on her film career.[14][15] Years later, in 2010, the vacant role of Inés Alcántara would be recast for Pilar Punzano, whom Visedo shares a reasonable physical resemblance and whom with Visedo had previously shared a leading role in Cascabel.[14][2][n. 1] After her first spell in Cuéntame, Visedo appeared in the family filmCarlitos y el campo de los sueños (2008), playing the role of Maite, a cook who helps the lead character, an orphan child who just dreams about having a family and playing football.[17][18][19]
Visedo also starred in La mujer del anarquista (The Anarchist's Wife), a romantic drama set in the Spanish Civil War and the Post-War period, where she played the adult version of Paloma (the child and teenage versions of Paloma were respectively played by Alba Barragán and Ivana Baquero).[20] She also had a leading role in Los amores locos (2009),[21] for which she won an award at the 14th Spanish Film Festival of Toulouse.[22]
In 2010, she starred in La duquesa [es], a biopic miniseries where Visedo portrayed a young version of Cayetana Fitz-James Stuart (the older version of the Duchess of Alba was played by Adriana Ozores).[23] She starred together with Gustavo Salmerón in the psychological thrillerLa Senda, were both performers play a troubled couple paying a visit to a remoted cabin in the woods in order to get their marriage back on track.[24]
In 2015, after Pilar Punzano was not renewed in Cuéntame—not free from controversy and acrimonious crossed accusations between Punzano and the rest of the cast—[25] Visedo was offered her former role as Inés Alcántara. She thus returned to the series, then at its 17th season, when the fiction was set in 1984.[26][27]
^In a 2008 special episode of Cuéntame, the character of Inés Alcántara had been already played by Marieta Orozco [es], although the actress did not show her face on-screen.[16]
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