María Casares
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María Casares (21 November 1922 – 22 November 1996) was a Spanish actress and one of the most distinguished stars of the French stage. She was usually credited in France as Maria Casarès.
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Background and family
Casares was born Maria Victoria Casares Quiroga y Pérez in La Coruña, Galicia, the daughter of Santiago Casares Quiroga, a minister in Manuel Azaña's government and Prime Minister of Spain and of Gloria Perez. At the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War (1936), the family was forced to flee. The father went to London, the mother and daughter sought refuge in Paris.
Exile to Paris
There, Maria attended the Lycée Victor Duruy then, after her graduation, she took speech classes with René Simon. She enrolled in the Paris Conservatoire, where she won the First Prize for tragedy and Second Prize for comedy. In July 1942, she auditioned for Marcel Herrand who engaged her for his Théâtre des Mathurins. There, over the course of the next three years, she appeared in several plays including Deirdre of the Sorrows by J. M. Synge, The Master Builder by Ibsen, Le Malentendu (The Misunderstanding) by Albert Camus (with whom she had an affair), and an especially important premiere, Fédérico, after Prosper Mérimée, with Gérard Philipe.
Film
In the meantime, she began to appear in films. Her first film role was in Marcel Carné's Les Enfants du paradis (1945), one of the great classics of French cinema. She also made Les dames du Bois de Boulogne (1945) for Robert Bresson, La Chartreuse de Parme (The Charterhouse of Parma) (1948) for Christian-Jaque, co-starring Gérard Philipe. For Cocteau, she played Death in his Orphée (1950) with Jean Marais and François Périer and in his Testament d'Orphée (Testament of Orpheus) (1959). In 1989, she was nominated for the César Award for Best Supporting Actress in La Lectrice.
Filmography
Films
- Someone Else's America (1995) Alonso's Mother
- Les Chevaliers de la table ronde (1990) Viviane
- Monte bajo (1989)
- The Reader (1988) General's Widow
- Blood and Sand (1987) Dolores
- Blanche et Marie (1985) Louise
- Flavia, la monaca musulmana (1974) Sister Agatha
- Hieronymus Bosch (1963) (voice)
- Testament of Orpheus (1960) The Princess
- Le Jardins du Seigneur (1954) (voice)
- Ombre et lumière (1951) Caroline Bessier
- Orphée (1950) The Princess
- Guernica (1950) (voice)
- L'Homme qui revient de loin (1949)
- Bagarres (1948) Carmelle
- La Chartreuse de Parme (1948) La duchesse Gina de San Severina
- La Septième porte (1948)
- L'Amour autour de la maison (1947) Thérèse
- La Revanche de Roger la Honte (1946) Julia de Terrenoire
- Roger la Honte (1946) Julia de Noirville
- Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne (1945) Hélène
- Les Enfants du paradis (1945) Nathalie
TV
- Les Nuits révolutionnaires (1989) La Murène
- Les Bonnes (1985) Madame
- Peer Gynt (1981) Ase
- Irène et sa folie (1980) Le docteur Burns
- Britannicus (1977) Agrippine
- L'Île des chèvres (1975) Agata
- La Reine verte (1964)
- Yerma (1963) Yerma
- Macbeth (1959) Lady Macbeth
- Énigmes de l'histoire (1956)
Stage success
From 1952 onwards, although she continued to appear in occasional films, she devoted herself mainly to the stage. She joined the Festival d'Avignon, the Comédie-Française and the Théâtre National Populaire under the leadership of Jean Vilar. Before her, no one actor or actress of foreign origin had ever played at Comédie-Française. She toured extensively throughout the world, appearing in the great classics of French theatre, including, in 1958, Corneille's Le Cid, Victor Hugo's Marie Tudor and Marivaux' Le Triomphe de l'Amour (The Triumph of Love) on Broadway.
She took up French nationality in 1975. She published her autobiography, Résidente privilégiée (Privileged Resident) in 1980.
She died at her country house in the chateau de La Vergne, in the small village of Alloue. When she died, she left the house to the village. Today, the domaine de la Vergne is a residence for artists and a setting for performances.Poitou-Charentes.
Bibliography
- Résidente privilégiée by Maria Casarès, Fayard, 1980 ISBN 2-213-00779-9
- Maria Casarès : L'étrangère by Javier Figuero & Marie-Hélène Carbonel, Fayard, 2005
