Portuguese actress Carmen Santos will today receive the Bárbara Virgínia Award, which honors outstanding women in Portuguese cinema, at the Cinemateca Portuguesa in Lisbon.
The announcement was made in December by the Portuguese Film Academy, promoter of the award, which at the time highlighted Carmen Santos’ “brilliant career”, which had developed since her film debut in 1977 in Manoel de Oliveira’s “Amor de Perdição”.
Born in Lisbon in 1946, Carmen Santos graduated in Germanic Philology from the Faculty of Letters of the University of Lisbon. She made her acting debut on the university theater stage, where she stood out in the performance of “Eh! Lá Fora!”, by Willliam Saroyan, at the Cénico de Direito, under the direction of Fernando Gusmão.
After graduating from university, Carmen Santos worked in various fields, such as advertising and teaching, while maintaining her activity as an actress in amateur theater, radio theater and some television appearances.
In 1975, she decided to become a professional actress, joining the Bonecreiros, based at the Casa da Cultura in Lisbon’s East Zone, where she performed in four plays from 1975 to 1977, the year in which she made her film debut with director Manoel de Oliveira.
“Since then, Carmen Santos has developed a brilliant career as an actress, which has spanned almost 50 years,” having “worked in theater, cinema and television,” the academy notes.
The Bárbara Virgínia Award was established by the Portuguese Film Academy in 2015 to honor outstanding women in Portuguese cinema.
In previous editions, the prize was awarded to Leonor Silveira, Laura Soveral, Teresa Ferreira, Júlia Buisel, Solveig Nordlund, Maria Gonzaga and Regina Pessoa.
