Belén Rueda on AllMovie

Spanish actress Belén Rueda originally set her sites on a much different career path: architecture. She majored in the subject when she enrolled in college, but it didn't take long for her to realize that her real passion was acting. She began modeling in the mid-'80s, and later began appearing as a TV presenter on Spanish television. By the mid-'90s, her appearances on the small screen in her home country came to be of the dramatic variety, and she became a popular character on Spanish TV dramas. In 2004, she was cast opposite Javier Bardem in The Sea Inside, a biopic of euthanasia advocate Ramón Sampedro. The film garnered immense critical praise, as did Rueda for her performance. She followed it up with a number of other big-screen roles, including starring role in the 2007 horror film The Orphanage.