Irene Visedo

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 film Carlitos 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 thriller La 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]

This list is incomplete; you can help by adding missing items. (January 2021)

Film

Television

Informational notes

Citations