López, Charo

(1943- )

   Charo López's elegant, serene beauty and smoky voice turned her into an icon during the Transition period. She studied philosophy before taking up acting at the Escuela Oficial de Cine and, since 1967, took small parts in films. Dissatisfied with their quality, she concentrated on stage, where she was a regular in Miguel Narros' innovative company. She also had a substantial career in television drama. The roles that gave her recognition were as the protagonist in the Gonzalo Suárez's prestigious miniseries Los gozos y las sombras (The Joys and the Shadows, 1981), as well as the harsh, vulgar Mauricia La Loca in the earlier Fortunata y Jacinta (1980).

   López had few starring roles, most notably in Los paraísos perdidos (Lost Paradises, Basilio Martín Patino, 1985). Some of her most remarkable performances have been in supporting parts, where she conveys an oddly distant fascination: she was an adulterous wife in La colmena (The Beehive, Mario Camus, 1982); a fantasy in Epílogo (Epilogue, Gonzalo Suárez, 1984); Doña Elvira, one of Don Juan's lovers who has retired to a monastery in Don Juan en los infiernos (Don Juan in Hell, Gonzalo Suárez, 1991); and in Almodóvar's Kika (1993), she was glimpsed as the murdered mother of the troubled protagonist. Her qualities were best used by Vicente Aranda in Tiempo de silencio (A Time of Silence, 1986), in which she played both the haughty mother of the wealthy friend of the protagonist and the prostitute he has sex with. Among her few recent roles, the cleaning lady in the gritty Pasajes (Daniel Calparsoro, 1996) and the tortured wife of the detective protagonist in Plenilunio (Full Moon, Imanol Uribe, 1999) showed the actress reaching into new territory.