Paz Vega

Info

Full Name: María de la Paz Campos Trigo
Date of birth: January 2, 1976 (50 years old)
Location: Sevilla, Andalucía
Country: Spain
Redes sociales: Facebook Instagram

Paz Vega has been active for 28 years, participating in 33 movies that average a 5.5/10 score.

Videos eCartelera

Tráiler en VOSE de 'Harry Potter' T1

Biography

When James L. Brooks went looking for the lead of 'Spanglish', he auditioned actresses in fifteen countries and picked one who didn't speak a word of English. It hardly mattered: neither did Flor, the Mexican housekeeper she played opposite Adam Sandler and Téa Leoni. That leap of faith introduced America to Paz Vega, by then already one of Spain's biggest stars.

She was born María de la Paz Campos Trigo on 2 January 1976 in Triana, the old quarter across the river in Seville, to a banderillero father and a housewife mother; her stage surname, Vega, came from her grandmother. A school trip to the theatre decided her future, and after a brief stab at journalism to please her father she trained at the Andalusian Theatre Centre and moved to Madrid at twenty.

From sitcom waitress to Almodóvar

Television came first, including '7 vidas', the pioneering sitcom often described as Spain's answer to 'Friends', before Julio Medem handed her the role that changed everything: the grieving, fearless waitress of 'Sex and Lucia' (2001), shot under the blinding light of Formentera with Tristán Ulloa. The film won her the Goya Award for Best New Actress, became an arthouse hit abroad and remains the title many international viewers still attach to her name.

She struck while the iron was hot: the musical comedy smash 'The Other Side of the Bed', the most watched Spanish film of 2002, the silent film within Pedro Almodóvar's 'Talk to Her', and the title role in Vicente Aranda's 'Carmen', Spain's most mythical heroine.

Hollywood, with and without English

After 'Spanglish' she worked steadily on both sides of the Atlantic: a corner shop double act with Morgan Freeman in '10 Items or Less', Lucrezia in 'The Borgia', the deadly Plaster of Paris in Frank Miller's 'The Spirit', a war photographer's wife opposite Colin Farrell in 'Triage' and Maria Callas beside Nicole Kidman in 'Grace of Monaco'.

The Taviani brothers cast her in their Armenian genocide drama 'The Lark Farm', she appeared with Jeremy Renner in 'Kill the Messenger' and faced Antonio Banderas in 'Acts Of Vengeance', and she even led 'The Bra', a European oddity filmed without a single line of dialogue.

Genre fans know her too: she fought the cartels with Sylvester Stallone in 'Rambo: Last Blood' and joined the second chapter of Netflix's cult puzzle 'The OA'.

Back home she reunited with Almodóvar in 'I'm So Excited', led thrillers like 'La casa del caracol' and boarded Santiago Segura's family comedy hit '¡A todo tren! Destino Asturias' and its 'sequel'. Spanish audiences even watched her win the first season of 'Mask Singer' hidden inside a Catrina costume, with none of the panel guessing who she was, and she returned the following year on the other side of the desk as an investigator. Between projects she's been a fixture on the Cannes red carpet for years as the face of a major beauty brand.

Behind the camera at last

In 2024 she wrote, directed and costarred in 'Rita', a drama set in Seville in the summer of 1984 that watches a working class family, and the domestic violence simmering in it, through the eyes of a seven year old girl. Played by newcomers Sofía Allepuz and Alejandro Escamilla, with Vega herself as their mother, it premiered at the Locarno Film Festival in August 2024.

The film toured festivals from Valladolid to Tallinn, was picked up for the UK and Ireland by Signature Entertainment and earned her a Goya nomination for Best New Director. Earlier in 2026 her home region named her Favourite Daughter of Andalusia, its highest personal honour.

Her private life had its own whirlwind chapter: she married Venezuelan businessman Orson Salazar in Caracas in 2002, three months after meeting him, and they raised three children, Orson, Ava and Lenon, between Spain and the United States, the eldest of whom has just started modelling. After 25 years together, the couple confirmed their separation in the spring of 2026. At fifty, with a second career behind the camera up and running, Paz Vega is far from done adding chapters.