Rossy de Palma

Info

Full Name: Rosa Elena García Echave
Date of birth: September 16, 1964 (62 years old)
Location: Palma de Mallorca
Country: Spain

Rossy de Palma has been active for 39 years, participating in 40 movies that average a 5.5/10 score.

Videos eCartelera

Tráiler en VOSE de 'Harry Potter' T1

Biography

The story everyone tells is that Pedro Almodóvar spotted Rossy de Palma behind the bar of a Madrid pub. She's spent years saying that isn't quite what happened. He went to her band's gigs because he liked them and, one night, in the bar where she worked, he was hunting for clothes for a transgender character played by Carmen Maura. He noticed the outfit she'd made herself, and offered her a part.

Behind the stage name is Rosa Elena García Echave, born in Palma de Mallorca on 16 September 1964 into a family with Asturian roots. Before acting she sold clothes on market stalls around the island. In 1984 she put together Peor Impossible, a pop and performance group that landed in the middle of the movida, Madrid's post-Franco cultural explosion, where she sang and danced.

Nine films with Almodóvar

She made her screen debut in 'Law of Desire' (1987) in a tiny part as a TV presenter. The real breakthrough came a year later with 'Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown', as Marisa, the prim fiancée who falls asleep after drinking gazpacho spiked with sleeping pills. The film travelled the world and made her face recognisable well beyond Spain.

She worked with him again on 'Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!', in a brief turn as a dealer on a Vespa, and then on 'Kika' (1993) and 'The Flower of My Secret' (1995), where she played the sister of Marisa Paredes' character. Those two roles brought her both of her Goya nominations, Spain's national film awards, for best supporting actress.

'Broken Embraces' (2009), 'Julieta' (2016) and 'Parallel Mothers' (2021) followed. In 2026 came 'Bitter Christmas', her ninth film with Almodóvar, in which she plays Gabriela opposite Bárbara Lennie and Leonardo Sbaraglia.

A film written for her

Away from Almodóvar, Álex de la Iglesia cast her in 'Acción mutante' (1993), and she went on to a long run of popular Spanish comedies, among them '20 Centimeters' (2005), 'Three Many Weddings' (2013) and 'Toc Toc' (2017).

Her work outside Spain grew alongside it. She appeared in Robert Altman's 'Prêt-à-Porter' (1994), worked with Mike Figgis, Lina Wertmüller and Patrice Leconte, and turned up in Terry Gilliam's 'The Man Who Killed Don Quixote'.

Her biggest leading role of those years was 'Madame' (2017). Director Amanda Sthers wrote the script with her in mind: a Spanish maid whose employers, Toni Collette and Harvey Keitel, pass her off as an aristocrat at a dinner party. The whole film rests on her.

Television, fashion and music

British and American audiences have met her on television more than once. She was Isabella of Castile in 'The White Princess', holding court in a distinctly far-fetched version of the Spanish court, and Countess Mandrax in 'Little Birds', the Anaïs Nin adaptation set in Tangier.

At home she's been a regular since 'Los ladrones van a la oficina' in the nineties, through 'La que se avecina', the Netflix musical 'Érase una vez... pero ya no' and 'La Mesías'.

Fashion is her other home. She's been a muse to Jean Paul Gaultier for decades, modelled for Thierry Mugler and Sybilla, appeared in George Michael's 'Too Funky' video in 1992 and even had her own MAC make-up collection. Almodóvar once described her looks as "cubist", and the label stuck.

She sings, too. In 2018 she voiced 'Preso' on Rosalía's album 'El mal querer', a spoken passage she co-wrote and recorded as a WhatsApp voice note. In 2024 she made her debut at Madrid's Teatro Real with 'Silencio', a piece built for her and slotted between Poulenc's 'La voix humaine' and Schoenberg's 'Erwartung'.

Honours and private life

The institutions came round in the end. She holds Spain's Gold Medal of Merit in the Fine Arts for 2019, collected in 2021, and in January 2024 France made her a Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters, the third rank that country had given her. In 2022 UNESCO appointed her a Goodwill Ambassador for cultural diversity.

She's seen Cannes from both sides: she sat on the main jury in 2015, the year the Coen brothers presided, and in 2022 she chaired the Caméra d'Or jury for best first film. In March 2026 the Málaga Film Festival gave her its Premio Málaga-SUR for her career.

She splits her time between Paris and Madrid, and is mother to Luna and Gabriel, both of whom work in fashion: Luna as a model and singer, Gabriel on the catwalk since 2023. About her love life she says very little, and usually in passing.

Her latest release is 'Día de caza', directed by Pedro Aguilera, a reworking of Carlos Saura's 1966 hunting drama 'La caza' with the men replaced by women, which she shares with Carmen Machi and Blanca Portillo. Nearly four decades after that first bit part, she's still picking the odd ones.