Carmen Sevilla

María del Carmen García Galisteo (16 October 1930 – 27 June 2023), known professionally as Carmen Sevilla, was a Spanish actress, singer, and dancer. She began her career in the 1940s and became one of the most popular and highest paid stars of Spanish cinema until the 1970s. In 1991, at the age of sixty, she began her career as a television presenter, working for the three major Spanish networks until her retirement in 2010. At the time of her death, she was one of the last surviving stars from the Golden Age of Mexican cinema and from the Golden Age of Hollywood. As an actress, she had leading roles in numerous films, including Imperial Violets (1952), Academy Award nominee Vengeance (1958), Don Juan (1956), and Searching for Monica (1962). She also had supporting roles in English-language epic films including King of Kings (1961) and Antony and Cleopatra (1972). As a singer she released over fifteen studio albums and numerous singles and compilations. Early life María del Carmen García Galisteo was born in the Heliópolis neighborhood of Seville on 16 October 1930, daughter of composer and Florentina Galisteo Ramírez, and the eldest sister of three siblings. Decades later she stated that her year of birth was 1931, as she had to add an extra year to her age to be able to work earlier and comply with labor regulations. After the Spanish Civil War, the family moved to Madrid, where her father and grandfather worked as lyricists for the films of Concha Piquer and Imperio Argentina. As a child, Sevilla was already attracted to the performing arts and soon began to sing and dance. In fact, at the age of twelve she went on stage for the first time with Estrellita Castro, with the show Rapsodia española, starring Paquita Rico. Castro became her artistic godmother, who met her when Carmen went to take some of her father's letters to the theater. She soon formed part of the theater companies of El Príncipe Gitano and of Paco Reyes. In the 1940s, she began her studies at the Conservatory of Music and in dance classes.