Carmen Maura, Gold Medal of the Academy

The Academy of Cinematographic Arts and Sciences of Spain has decided to award the 2009 Gold Medal to Carmen Maura. The Board of Directors awards the actress with this award “for her contribution to the improvement of Spanish cinema.”

The Board of Directors of the Film Academy, under the brand new presidency of Álex de la Iglesia, has decided to award its Gold Medal to actress Carmen Maura. Born in Madrid in 1945, Maura is a complete and versatile actress, who naturally masters both comedy and drama and is capable of mixing both in the same story and even on the same plane.

After his beginnings in the theater, in the mid-seventies he managed to position himself as the main figure in one of the emblematic comedies of the transition, paper tigers, directed by Fernando Colomo. In 1980 he joined the “Almodóvar club” with Pepi, Luci, Bom and other girls of the bunch, and very soon she acquired professional recognition as an essential actress of the new Madrid comedy and as a muse of Almodóvar, with whom she worked in titles such as between darkness(1983), What have I done to deserve this? (1984), Matador (1985), The law of desire (1987) and above all, Women on the verge of a nervous breakdown (1988), with which she won the Europa Award for Best Actress and a Goya for Best Female Performance, in addition to winning the National Cinematography Award that same year.

After a notorious breakup with the director from La Mancha, he plays Oh, Carmela! (1990), thanks to which he once again won the European Film Award and the Goya Award. During the nineties, he did not stop acting in feature films both in Spain and abroad, especially in France, where he achieved his greatest successes and the title of Knight of Honor of Arts and Letters.

Carmen Maura achieved her third major professional triumph in 2000 with The Community, by the now president of the Academy Álex de la Iglesia, which would earn her her third Goya, in addition to the Silver Shell for Best Actress at the San Sebastián festival. 2006 was the year of the reunion with Almodóvar, with whom he worked on the film Return, with which he would win his fourth Goya Award, thus adding eight titles to the director's filmography. Francis Ford Coppola summoned the actress in 2008 to participate in the filming of Gloomy, his latest film. Currently filming with Yasmina Reza Girls. Your next project is Girls, by Frenchman Philippe Le Guay, in production.

Gold medal

The Film Academy has awarded this honorary award annually since 1986 to personalities who have contributed throughout their career to the industrial or artistic improvement of Spanish cinema. The following have received the gold medal: Vicente Casanova, Fernando Rey, Carlos Saura, Francisco Rabal, Alfredo Matas, Ana Belén, Sara Montiel, Elías Querejeta, Gil Parrondo, José Luis Borau, Fernando Fernán Gómez, Carmelo Bernaola, Concha Velasco, Antonio Banderas, Basilio Martín Patino, Geraldine Chaplin, Pablo Núñez and Maribel Verdú.