María Belén Rueda García-Porrero (born 16 March 1965) is a Spanish actress. She became popular in Spain for her performances in the Globomedia-produced television series '' Periodistas'' (1998–2002) and, most notably, ''

Los Serrano ''Los Serrano'' is a Spanish television drama comedy which premiered on 22 April 2003 and aired on Telecinco. It tells the story of the Serrano family, who lives in Round Santa Justa No 133, located in the fictional neighborhood of Santa Justa, in ...

'' (2003–2007). Likewise, she has carved an international reputation among horror fans for her performances in horror and suspense works.

Biography

María Belén Rueda García-Porrero was born in

Madrid Madrid ( , ) is the capital and most populous city of Spain. The city has almost 3.4 million inhabitants and a metropolitan area population of approximately 6.7 million. It is the second-largest city in the European Union (EU), and ...

on 16 March 1965. Her father was a civil engineer and her mother was a

ballet Ballet () is a type of performance dance that originated during the Italian Renaissance in the fifteenth century and later developed into a concert dance form in France and Russia. It has since become a widespread and highly technical form of ...

instructor. She is the second of three children; her siblings are named María Jesús and Alfonso. She and her family moved to San Juan,

Alicante Alicante ( ca-valencia, Alacant) is a city and municipality in the Valencian Community, Spain. It is the capital of the province of Alicante and a historic Mediterranean port. The population of the city was 337,482 , the second-largest in t ...

when she was a child. When Rueda was 18 years old she moved to Madrid to study

architecture Architecture is the art and technique of designing and building, as distinguished from the skills associated with construction. It is both the process and the product of sketching, conceiving, planning, designing, and constructing building ...

Career

While she was a student, she made her television debut as a steward in the night-show ''

VIP Noche VIP Noche was a popular 1990s game show in the Spanish Telecinco network, originally presented by the Spanish TV producer Emilio Aragón. In the show, the Spanish version of ''Hollywood Squares'', national stars and comedians were seated in a ver ...

'' originally hosted by , eventually becoming the co-host together with Emilio Aragón. While she had been already cast as the photographer Clara Nadal for the series '' Periodistas'' she was called to briefly play the same character of Clara Nadal in the popular dramedy ''

Médico de familia Médico de familia (Family Doctor) is a Spanish dramedy television series produced by Globomedia for Telecinco. The series premiered at the end of 1995, to become the most popular Tuesday night show for four years and made Telecinco a popular nati ...

'' (also produced by Globomedia) as a sort of emergency casting to cover a leave on absence, and thus the latter marked her debut as a television actress in 1997 (and both fictions became connected in the same fictional universe). She went then on to play the character of Clara Nadal in ''Periodistas'' from 1998 to 2002. Starting in 2003 and over the course of six seasons and 107 episodes, Rueda performed the role of Lucía Gómez in the popular series ''

'', leaving the series in 2007 reportedly to focus on her stage career. She landed her feature film debut with a performance in the 2004 film ''

The Sea Inside ''The Sea Inside'' ( es, Mar adentro) is a 2004 Spain, Spanish psychological drama film co-written and directed by Alejandro Amenábar, who also co-produced, scored and edited. It is based on the real-life story of Ramón Sampedro (played by Javie ...

'', for which she won a

Goya Award The Goya Awards ( es, Premios Goya) are Spain's main national annual film awards, commonly referred to as the Academy Awards of Spain. The awards were established in 1987, a year after the founding of the Academy of Cinematographic Arts and Sci ...

and an Actors Union Award to Best New Actress. She received another Goya nomination for her role in the 2007 film, ''The Orphanage''. Rueda played the lead role of the Spanish thriller ''Julia's Eyes'', which was produced by

Guillermo del Toro Guillermo del Toro Gómez (; born October 9, 1964) is a Mexican filmmaker, author, and actor. He directed the Academy Award–winning fantasy films ''Pan's Labyrinth'' (2006) and ''The Shape of Water'' (2017), winning the Academy Awards for Be ...

. She also starred in Oriol Paulo's thriller '' The Body''.

Filmography

Awards and nominations

Personal life

During the time of

she entered a relationship with producer

Daniel Écija Daniel Arturo Écija Bernal (born 17 June 1963) is a media producer and screenwriter. Starting with ''Médico de familia'', he is credited as creator and executive producer of a long list of Spanish television series. He served as chairman of Glob ...

, with whom she had 3 daughters, including actress Belén Écija. After 14 years of domestic partnership, she got married with Écija in 2003. The couple separated a year later. She later was in a relationship with Roger Vincent.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Rueda, Belen 1965 births Living people Actresses from Madrid Spanish film actresses Spanish stage actresses Spanish television actresses Spanish television presenters 20th-century Spanish actresses 21st-century Spanish actresses Spanish women television presenters