Pedro Almodóvar was an actress

Marisa Paredes, a respected Spanish actress who collaborated with Pedro Almodóvar in films such as The flower of my secret, All about my mother and The skin I live indied. She was 78 years old.

Her death was announced Tuesday by Spain’s Academy of Cinematographic Arts and Sciences, which called her one of the country’s “most iconic actresses…her oeuvre was defined by women who were strong, ambivalent, broken, passionate, enigmatic, but who were before all very human.”

Almodóvar told Spanish public broadcaster RTVE that “it’s like I woke up from a bad dream… I’m struggling to come to terms with Marisa’s death.” In their country, she was known as “Almodóvar’s girl”.

Paredes also played society mother-in-law Roberto Benigni Life is beautiful (1997) and the head of an orphanage in Guillermo del Toro’s horror film Devil’s spine (2001), set during the Spanish Civil War.

She and Almodóvar first worked together in Dark habits (1983), where she played the LSD-using murderous sister Manura, and they reunited for High heels (1991), in which she played torch singer Becky.

Paredes earned a Goya Award nomination for her turn as a woman resistant to writing romance novels in The flower of my secret (1995). Also for Almodóvar, she played an actress All about my mother (1999), party guest in Talk to Her (2002) and the maid and mother of the mad scientist Antonio Banderas in The skin I live in (2011).

“Heartbroken by the death of Marisa Paredes, a great lady of acting,” Banderas wrote on social media. “Dear friend, you left us too soon.”