Eleanor Watling Biography

Leonor Watling

(Leonor Ceballos Watling; Madrid, 1975) Spanish actress and singer who has combined an already solid film career with her dedication to music, an area in which she has also gained notoriety as a vocalist and lyricist for the Marlango group.The daughter of a Cadiz father and a British mother, when she was little she wanted to be a dancer, but had to abandon dance due to a knee injury and decided to change her tights for acting.After taking his first steps in amateur theater in various cultural centers, in 1993 he made his film debut with a small role in Hanging Gardens , by Pablo Llorca, a film starring Féodor Adkine and Icíar Bollaín that was very well received by specialized critics.That same year, the death of her father plunged her into a deep sadness and she decided to change of scene.She moved to London and, while studying secretarial work to please her mother, she perfected her training as an actress at the Actors Center.

Leonor Watling

Upon his return to Madrid he participated in several television series ( Hermanos de leche , Dear teacher ) and in the short films Sueños de sal (1997 ) and Un solo de cello (1997), before Miguel Albaladejo gave him the leading role in the comedy The first night of my life (1998).But it was his next film, La hora de los valientes (1998), directed by Antonio Mercero and in which he shared the bill with Gabino Diego, which gave him some renown and provided him with his first Goya candidacy.for best actress, an award that that year went to Penélope Cruz for The girl of your eyes .However, popularity among the general public came as a result of the television series Raquel seeks her site (2000-2001), in which she starred alongside Cayetana Guillén Cuervo and in which she played a social worker.

Bigas Luna would call her shortly after to form a love triangle with Jordi Mollá and Eduard Fernández in Son de mar (2001), a film with high erotic content that a turn of the screw in his career before reencountering comedy in My mother likes women (2002), by Daniela Féjerman and Inés París, for which he repeated a Goya nomination as the lead.He did not get the Goya, which this time Mercedes Sampietro took for Common Places , but he did get the Fotogramas de Plata.That same year, she was a dancer in a coma at the Oscar-winning Talk to her , by Pedro Almodóvar, a film that, despite the limitations of her role, made her known internationally.

After chaining several titles in which he had secondary interventions ( My life without me , by Isabel Coixet; In the city , by Cesc Gay, and the comedy French Mauvais esprit , by Patrick Alessandrin), in 2004 he starred in Unconscious , directed by Joaquín Oristrell, and the Ecuadorian film Crónicas , directed by Sebastian Lamb.In 2005, Bad seasons , by Manuel Martínez Cuenca, a film in which he had Javier Cámara as a co-star, was released, and in 2006 Salvador (Puig Antich) , by Manuel Huerga, where she played the girlfriend of the young Catalan anarchist executed in 1974.Also in 2006, she played Doña Guiomar de Ulloa in the controversial Teresa.The body of Christ , by Ray Loriga.Two years later he released twice: The Oxford Crimes (Álex de la Iglesia) and Lesson 27 (Alessandro Baricco), two films that he shot in English and in which He shared shots with John Hurt.

Leonor Watling in Lope (2010)

And doubly it also premiered in 2010 , after a few months of rest in which she dedicated herself to the care of her son Luca, born the previous year; the father of the child is the Uruguayan singer-songwriter Jorge Drexler, with whom the actress and singer shares her life.In January Magical Journey to Africa , by Catalan director Jordi Llompart, came to the screens, and in September Lope , by Brazilian Andrucha Waddington, an approach to the figure of the poet, premiered and playwright Lope de Vega in which Watling (Isabel de Urbina) shared the bill with Alberto Ammann (Lope) and Pilar López de Ayala (Elena Osorio).The film closed the 67th International Film Festival of Venice, was presented in the official section of the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) and was one of the three shortlisted by the Spanish Academy to aspire to the Oscar for best foreign language film.The Canadian production If I Were You (2012), by Joan Carr-Wiggin, is among the most recent titles in her already extensive filmography.

Parallel to her film career, Leonor Watling has built a recognized career as a singer and lyricist for the group Marlango, with which he has released four albums, Marlango (2004), Automatic Imperfection (2005), The Electrical Morning (2007) and Life in the Treehouse (2010).Watling and his companions, Alejandro Pelayo (piano) and Oscar Ybarra (trumpet), have achieved with these four albums, which exude rock and blues influences (from Tom Waits, to whom they pay homage with the same name, to PJ Harvey, Radiohead, Calexico, Mark Lanegan or Eels), create a very personal sound that some have already dubbed the "Marlango sound".

Marlango was one of the revelation albums of the year 2004, and the group's second album, Automatic Imperfection , confirmed that they would have something to talk about in the future..The strength of their proposals was clear on their third studio album, The Electrical Morning , in which they had collaborators of the stature of Miguel Bosé on the song Dance! Dance! Dance! , and by Jorge Drexler on the song Hold me Tight .In 2010 Marlango presented his fourth album, Life in the Treehouse , a lighter and more cheerful album in which the trio once again had outstanding collaborations, such as those with singer-songwriter Rufus Wainwright ( The Answer ), Ben and Leo Sidran or Suso Saiz.The promotion of the album took them on a tour of Spain and America, highlighting the presentation, on April 20 with full capacity, at the Gran Teatro del Liceo in Barcelona.