Natalia Verbeke

Info

Full Name: Natalia Verbeke
Date of birth: February 23, 1975 (51 years old)
Location: Buenos Aires
Country: Argentina
Height: 1,61m

Natalia Verbeke has been active for 27 years, participating in 17 movies that average a 5.9/10 score.

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Tráiler en VOSE de 'Harry Potter' T1

Biography

In 2003 a small London thriller called 'Dot the i' premiered at Sundance. Written and directed by Matthew Parkhill, it turned on a love triangle between a Spanish woman about to marry an Englishman and the stranger who kisses her at her hen night. The woman was Natalia Verbeke. Playing opposite her were Gael García Bernal and James D'Arcy, and further down the cast list sat two unknowns called Tom Hardy and Charlie Cox.

Verbeke was born in Buenos Aires on 23 February 1975, in the Caballito district, the second of three children of a dentist. She was eleven when the family moved to Madrid. After finishing school at the Beatriz Galindo institute she signed up to read Journalism at the Complutense, then dropped it the moment she was accepted by the Real Escuela Superior de Arte Dramático. She trained afterwards at the Guindalera school with Juan Pastor, took a course with John Strasberg and studied dance and flamenco.

One of her earliest stage jobs was a production of 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' staged in England. Her first film came in 1998, Jesús R. Delgado's 'Un buen novio', and three years later she was in another British production, Joel Hopkins's indie road comedy 'Jump Tomorrow', which brought her a nomination for Most Promising Newcomer at the British Independent Film Awards.

The Argentine film that made her a name

Her breakthrough at home had come a few years earlier. 'Nobody Knows Anybody' (1999), the directing debut of Mateo Gil, was a conspiracy thriller set during Seville's Holy Week with a score by Alejandro Amenábar. Verbeke played María opposite Eduardo Noriega and Jordi Mollà.

Two years later Juan José Campanella cast her as Naty in 'Son of the Bride', the girlfriend of a restaurant owner (Ricardo Darín) whose life is coming apart while his mother slides into Alzheimer's. The film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, and it made Verbeke a name on both sides of the Atlantic.

The musical comedy that took over Spain

What happened next was a genuine phenomenon. 'The Other Side of the Bed' was a farce about two couples cheating on each other, and every so often the cast stopped talking and burst into pop songs. Nobody expected much of it. It ended up the highest grossing Spanish film of 2002, with 2.7 million admissions and 12.1 million euros in the till.

Verbeke played Paula alongside Ernesto Alterio, Paz Vega, Guillermo Toledo and Alberto San Juan, and won a Premio Ondas for best actress for that role and for Son of the Bride together. She then reunited with the film's writer, David Serrano, for his directing debut 'Días de fútbol' (2003), a comedy about a group of thirtysomethings who decide to form a five a side team.

Harder work followed. She was Montse in 'The Method' (2005), Marcelo Piñeyro's adaptation of the stage hit 'El método Grönholm', in which a group of job candidates tear each other apart in a boardroom. That same year she made 'Fisticuffs', and she went on to 'GAL' (2006), about Spain's dirty war against ETA, and 'Arritmia' (2007).

In France she led 'The Women on the 6th Floor' as a Spanish maid who upends the household of a stiff Parisian stockbroker played by Fabrice Luchini. Carmen Maura won a César for it. Later came the French caper 'Family Heist' and 'The Last Suit' (2017), in which an elderly Jewish tailor travels from Buenos Aires to Poland to keep a promise.

Doc Martin in Asturias, then the streamers

British viewers have an easy way into her most famous television role. Between 2009 and 2011 Verbeke played Adriana Pozuelo, the village schoolteacher, in 'Doctor Mateo', Antena 3's remake of ITV's 'Doc Martin'. The Martin Clunes part went to Gonzalo de Castro, Cornwall became Asturias, and the fishing village of Lastres stood in for the fictional San Martín del Sella. Five seasons of that slow burning romance later, Verbeke had her third Premio Ondas and a Zapping award.

She had joined 'Los Serrano' two years earlier as the new head of the school at the centre of the show. After Doctor Mateo she played a forensic doctor in 'El Caso. Crónica de sucesos' (2016), then led 'El nudo' (2019), the first original series made for Atresplayer Premium, and appeared with Maribel Verdú in 'Ana Tramel. El juego' (2021). In 'Una vida menos en Canarias' (2024) she was a police inspector working the islands opposite Ginés García Millán.

Two recent jobs have travelled furthest. In 'Todos mienten', Pau Freixas's thriller for Movistar Plus, she is the mother of the teenager filmed with his teacher. And in 'Billionaires' Bunker' (2025) she plays Frida, one of the rich women sealed inside a luxury bunker in the series Álex Pina and Esther Martínez Lobato made for Netflix after 'Money Heist'. It's her first science fiction role and she has called it one of the toughest things she has done.

Stage work, family and a late second act

Theatre became her preferred ground somewhere along the way. She was touring 'Invencible' in 2016 when she had to leave the run because her pregnancy no longer suited the part. She came back the following year in Daniel Veronese's rewrite of Chekhov's 'Uncle Vanya' for the Centro Dramático Nacional, and in 2022 worked with Claudio Tolcachir on 'Tercer cuerpo'. A stage run, she's said, fits family life better than a shoot does.

That family stays well out of view. She has been with the Spanish Argentine former rugby international Marcos Poggi since 2015, and their daughter Chiara was born in March 2017. They have never married. Verbeke has also been unusually blunt about the lean years that followed her thirtieth birthday, when she no longer fitted the pretty young thing roles and was not yet being offered mothers.

The answer arrived late and all at once. Paula came back in 'Todos los lados de la cama', the sequel Samantha López Speranza shot twenty three years after the original, and in 2026 she led 'Lapönia', a Christmas comedy that reunited her with David Serrano, filmed in the Basque Country doubling for Rovaniemi and released in Spain on 1 April.

Waiting behind it are '2+2' for Gracia Querejeta, the Barcelona ensemble piece 'Citas' and the SkyShowtime crime series 'Muerte en Llanes'. Not bad for someone who thought, in her early thirties, that she had run out of places to fit.