Gil, Ariadna

(1969- )

   Ariadna Gil was born in Barcelona and sang for a rock band as a teenager. She studied acting at drama school, but it was her face on an arts magazine that caught the eye of producers and particularly director Bigas Luna, who offered her a small part in Lola (1986). It took a few years before she appeared in a substantial role, in Amo tu cama rica (I Love Your Delightful Bed, Emilio Martínez Lázaro, 1992), a romantic comedy with Pere Ponce and Javier Bardem. Still considered just a pretty face, it was only after her sensitive performance as lesbian Violeta in Fernando Trueba's Belle Epoque (1992) that she began to be taken seriously by critics.

   Gil's strengths as a star are a strong sensuality and a husky voice, which can suggest depths of mystery, but she has always resisted typecasting, and even in her roles as object of desire, there is a sense of intelligent distance. Since the mid-1990s, she took a number of challenging roles as a heroin addict in Manuel Huerga's Antártida (1995), as a young woman unhappy in love in Malena es nombre de tango (Malena Is a Tango's Name, Gerardo Herrero, 1996), as a nun in Vicente Aranda's Libertarias (Freedom Fighters, 1996), a disturbed young delinquent in Lágrimas negras (Black Tears, Ricardo Franco, 1998), the wife of a closeted homosexual in Segunda piel (Second Skin, Gerardo Vera, 1999), and as the object of sexual fantasy in both La virgen de la lujuria (Virgin of Lust, Arturo Ripstein, 2002) and El embrujo de Shanghai (The Enchantment of Shanghai, Fernando Trueba, 2002). She is the life partner of writer and director David Trueba, with whom she collaborated in his film debut as director of Obra maestra (Masterpiece, 2000), as well as in Soldados de Salamina (The Salamina Soldiers, 2003), and with a strong supporting part in Bienvenido a casa (Welcome Home, 2006). For Sólo quiero caminar (I Only Want to Keep on Walking, Agustín Díaz Yanes, 2008), she gave one of the best performances of her career as the haunted, hard, intense Aurora, an ex-prisoner involved in a robbery with other women in Mexico.

   Historical Dictionary of Spanish Cinema by Alberto Mira