Norma Aleandro

Representing the third generation of her family to work in the theater, versatile talent Norma Aleandro began acting with her parents as a child and matured into one of Argentina's most distinguished thespians. A playwright and director as well as a performer, she fled her homeland for fear of persecution at the hands of its military junta, spending many years in exile first in Uruguay and later Spain before her 1983 return. The dark-haired actress with a slightly pinched face and expressively limpid brown eyes gained international recognition for her superb portrait of a typical middle-class Argentine woman who discovers her life is a lie in the politically-themed "La Historia Oficial/The Official Story" (1985). Aleandro crafted a heartbreaking portrayal of a average wife who comes to suspect that her beloved adopted daughter is the child of a political prisoner. In a role specifically tailored for her, she triumphed both personally and artistically, earning Best Actress honors at Cannes and from the New York Film Critics Circle. Set in 1983 as the junta was disintegrating, "The Official Story" was the first film to examine the fallen regime's responsibility for disappearances, tortures, murders and stolen babies, making a political statement in the midst of a crackling good story that deservedly snared the Academy Award as Best Foreign Film, although the expected nomination for Aleandro's gut-wrenching work failed to materialize.