Paz Vega: An actress of many dimensions

Described by the Andalusian regional government as “having achieved an explicitly international trajectory”, Paz Vega is an actress, model and film director who began her career in Spanish television and went on to have considerable success in the US. Born María de la Paz Campos Trigo in Seville in 1976, the talented artist became well known through Spanish television series such as Más Que Amigos, Compañeros and, especially, 7 Vidas, before moving into international cinema.

The daughter of bullfighter Manuel Campos, she adopted the stage name Vega as a tribute to her grandmother. She began her acting career at the San José school of drama in Seville. Although she initially studied Information Sciences, she later abandoned her studies and moved to Madrid to pursue a career in acting.

She subsequently made the leap to the US in 2004 with the film Spanglish, an American romantic comedy drama in which she starred alongside Adam Sandler. This film established Vega as an international actress and led to roles in feature films such as The Spirit, alongside Samuel L Jackson, and Triage, where she shared the screen with Colin Farrell and the legendary Christopher Lee.

In 2014, she was cast as the renowned opera singer María Callas in the biographical movie Grace of Monaco. The film stars Nicole Kidman in the lead role as Grace Kelly, the Princess of Monaco, and includes a supporting cast of Tim Roth, Derek Jacobi and Frank Langella.

Lucrative movie offers would continue to follow, including a role in the fifth instalment in the iconic Rambo film franchise, Last Blood, written by and starring Sylvester Stallone as the vigilante John Rambo.

In 2016, she appeared as Renata Duarte in the Netflix series The OA, and in 2019, she reprised her role in the second season of the hit science fiction drama.

While navigating her international film career, Vega continue working on hit Spanish television shows such as El Continental and Fugitiva, as well as being a finalist of Master Chef Celebrity in 2018.

She returned to the big screen in 2020, when she starred in Australian-film Chasing Wonders. In September 2021, she signed with Netflix to star in the American anthology series Jigsaw, later renamed Kaleidoscope. In this epic heist series starring Giancarlo Esposito (Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul), Vega plays Ava Mercer, a lawyer who becomes a criminal gang's weapons specialist.

She is currently based in Madrid, the city where her career began.