Acting
Dec 2, 1953
Valladolid, Castilla y León, Spain
Ágata Lys
Acting
Biography
Actress (b. Valladolid, Spain, Dec. 3, 1953). After having studied simultaneously Philosophy and Art and Speech (both careers remained unfinished), she became a household name overnight as one of the pretty and "bespectacled" hostesses of the top-rated TV contest "1, 2, 3, Responda Otra Vez", where she popularized what was going to be her early screen persona: platinum blonde-dyed hair, provocative ways and a sensuality always ready to break out. She made her film debut in 1972, at 19, and acquired an enormous popularity thanks to her tremendous sex-appeal and a clever promotion campaign that exploited a certain similarity between her looks and those of the late Marilyn Monroe to the extent of making a successful movie named precisely "The New Marilyn" (1976). She kept this image for a while (especially in her spectacular TV appearances in the mid-70s), but eventually got tired of it and decided to cut off her hair completely (she did it herself with a pair of scissors borrowed from a filming kit) and let it grow its natural dark colour again. Blonde or brunette, Lys grabbed a long string of femme fatale roles in films of each and every genre (thrillers, comedies, dramas, westerns, etc.) and turned into some kind of domestic myth at that time. (She also had the advantage of owning a fine diction that matched her thought-provoking voice perfectly, so, unlike some other actresses of that era, she didn't need to be dubbed.) Anyway, after leading her bold image one step further in the late 70s, she decided to stop making films and concentrate on her theatrical work, that she had started in 1973 playing Dª Inés de Ulloa in Zorrilla's "Don Juan Tenorio" with her own company. In the 1980s she focused her activity on recording music (which she did with real gusto and vocal dexterity), performing in both musical shows and dramatic or comic plays in which she displayed an image far removed from the one that shot her to fame and even making more sporadic appearances on TV (playing, for example, a splendid Portia on a small-screen adaptation of Shakespeare's "The Merchant Of Venice"). The late 80s saw her returning to the movies and scoring some films of uneven success and quality, although she has always risen to the occasion. In any case, she is still an underestimated actress, though she has proved capable of giving such amusing characterizations as that of "Avisa A Curro Jiménez" (1978), where she seemed almost unrecognizable. Now she leads a rather reclusive life when not working (in contrast to the antics and eccentricities of her early career) and, although she has never married, she enjoys a very stable relationship with Fernando, her partner of some 20 years. Hers is really one of those examples of body-with-a-brain-on-top-to-match, and hopefully she will still be around for a large number of years. - IMDb Mini Biography By: alberto mallofré
Feature Films (49)
A mute woman, traumatized by her parents' death, faces new horrors when her cousin is murdered by a suspected killer. As danger looms, the truth proves far more complex.
Knife of Ice
Daniel, a writer seeking seclusion to work on his new book, finds himself stranded at a rural bed and breakfast run by a strange and prudish young woman and her ailing, wheelchair-bound husband who remains shut in his room all day. As night falls, a psychotic, razor-wielding killer begins stalking the bed and breakfast, brutally slashing the throats of its most sex-crazed guests, whose bodies and luggage then mysteriously disappear the following morning...
Trauma
Onofre, who is forty years old, is still a virgin. He's going to put great efforts to leave this state...
Onofre
A young girl, after failing an exam, is forced by her father, a taxi-driver, to learn his profession. Soon she discovers that her father is not only a driver but also a member of a racist group eliminating immigrants, homosexual, transvestite, etc. people. She also falls in love with a boy, also a taxi-driver and a "socio" of the group.
Taxi
Santiago wakes up like any other morning. He goes down to the kitchen and his whole family is waiting for him: it's his birthday. They all sing "Happy Birthday to You" and give him presents. But when he opens the present of his youngest son, he gets angry and says he doesn't like it. The boy starts crying and saying that he loves him, but Santiago answers that he doesn't believe him and he tells the boy that he is fired and that he wants another son, who is thinner, who doesn't need glasses and who resembles him more. Written by Pablo Montoya
Family
Television & Series (5)
Amar en tiempos revueltos is a Spanish soap opera set in the times of the Spanish civil war and the early Francoism. The serial has been aired from 2005 and has won prizes in Spain and a Silver Medal in the «New York Festivals». In January 2013 will air on Antena 3 with new name, Amar es para siempre
Love in Difficult Times
Cachitos de hierro y cromo is a Spanish musical-themed documentary program, directed by Jero Rodríguez and hosted by Virginia Díaz. It is an unapologetic musical display of RTVE's sound legacy in the form of performances on the set of programs such as 'Aplauso', 'Galas del Sábado', 'Mapa Sonoro', 'Zona Franca' or 'Los Conciertos de Radio 3'. For nearly 60 years, artists and other specimens have stormed viewers' screens. The result is a polyphony of images and memories that includes everything from James Brown to Camela, from Perales to REM, from Gabinete to Violent Femmes. And so all the time. Our secret weapon has been the historical archive of TVE, the repository of Spanish collective memory for more than half a century.
