María Casares

María Casares, born Maria Victoria Casares Quiroga, (21 November 1922 - 22 November 1996) is a French actress of Spanish origin and one of the most distinguished stars of the French stage.

Background and family

Casares was born 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 amd 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, 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).

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 Theatre National Populaire under the leadership of Jean Vilar. 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. ISBN 2-213-00779-9

She died at her country house in La Vergne, Poitou-Charentes.