Angélica Aragón

Angélica Aragón, born Angélica Espinoza Stransky, is one of the defining faces of Mexican screen acting across three formats at once: cinema, telenovela and stage. Her father was the composer and actor José Ángel Espinoza, known as Ferrusquilla, so the industry was the family business before it was her career.

Her position is unusual because she is a serious film actress who also carried mainstream telenovelas instead of treating them as a step down. Mirada de mujer put a middle-aged woman's desire at the centre of prime time and made her the subject of a national argument; she returned to the character years later in El regreso. Before that came En carne propia and Agujetas de color de rosa. In parallel, the film work placed her in Sex, Shame & Tears and The Crime of Padre Amaro, two of the biggest Mexican pictures of their moment.

Hollywood used her the way Hollywood uses established Latin American actresses: as the mother, the matriarch, the moral centre. She is an uncredited Bene Gesserit sister under a great deal of costume in David Lynch's Dune, María in The Evil That Men Do, María José in A Walk in the Clouds, Alma Suarez in Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights. The parts narrowed as the productions grew, which is a pattern rather than an accident, and she has kept working on both sides of the border through Bella, Mr. Pig and the animated Casagrandes Movie.