1.
Our Lovers (2016)
Role:
María
Amaia Salamanca scored her very first audition and made her acting debut on television in 2006 as Paula, one of the main characters of the Spanish teen drama series ‘SMS, sin miedo a soñar’, which also starred several other promising young actors like María Castro, Yon González, Mario Casas and Aroa Gimeno. She went on to portray the role in all 187 episodes of the first Spanish prime time daily television series for two seasons until 2007. That year, she appeared as Cristina in two episodes of the television series ‘Los hombres de Paco’, followed by a lone appearance on the comedy series ‘Becarios’ in 2008. Also in 2008, she provided voice to the animated film ‘Space Chimps: Misión Espacial’. She next landed the lead role of Catherine Ruiz in the Spanish romantic thriller series ‘Sin tetas no hay paraíso’ (2008-10), an adaptation of the Colombian telenovela of the same name, in which her chemistry with El Duque (played by Miguel Ángel Silvestre) earned both of them recognition. When Silvestre decided to leave the show at the end of season two, because of the popularity of the show, the producers shot two endings including one in which El Duque is killed off, and continued with a third season of the series.
In 2009, apart from starring in the telefilm ‘No estás sola, Sara’, Salamanca made her big screen debut in the lead female role in the romantic comedy ‘Fuga de cerebros’ (‘Brain Drain’), which became the highest grossing film of 2009 in Spain. She also made her theatre debut the same year in an adaptation of the novella ‘La marquesa de O’ by German writer Heinrich von Kleist. Her other roles that year were in the comedy film ‘¡Qué más quisiera yo!’ and the short video ‘Enarmonía’. In 2010, she shared screen space with Fele Martínez, Santiago Segura and Adam Jezierski in the romantic comedy ‘Tensión sexual no resuelta’ (‘Unresolved Sexual Tension’) and went on to portray Spanish Queen Letizia Ortiz in the two-part telefilm ‘Felipe y Letizia’. Next year, she played the lead in the horror thriller ‘XP3D’ (‘Paranormal eXperience in 3D’), which was the first Spanish horror film made in 3D, and joined the cast of the crime mystery series ‘Gran Hotel’ as one of the main characters, Alicia Alarcón, which she portrayed for 39 episodes until 2013. During this period, she also acted in the Argentine-Spanish crime-comedy thriller ‘¡Atraco!’ (‘Hold Up!’) (2012) and the short film ‘Muy mujer’ (2012), and appeared in an episode of the television series ‘Inquilinos’ (2013).
Salamanca’s next big role was as Bárbara de Senillosa in the Spanish drama series ‘Velvet’, which she joined in the first season of the series as a recurring character and became a main character during the next two seasons in 2014-15. She left the series following its third season in December 2015 to start filming another series for the same network titled ‘La embajada’, in which she played the role of Fatima the following year. Around this time, she also appeared in a couple short films like ‘Amaia's Little Helpers’ and ‘Uncomfortable silences’, the latter being a spoof of the 1994 cult hit film ‘Pulp Fiction’ by Quentin Tarantino, as well as the romantic comedy film ‘Nuestros amantes’ (‘Our Lovers’) and the comedy film ‘Manual de principiantes para ser presidente’. She reprised her role as Bárbara de Senillosa in an episode of the spin-off series ‘Velvet Colección’ in October 2017. Also that year, she played one of the lead characters, Julia Ballester, in the Spanish horror fantasy series ‘Tiempos de guerra’ (‘Morocco: Love in Times of War’).
She played a major role in the Argentine-Spanish mystery thriller ‘Perdida’ in 2018, followed by more feature film roles the next year in movies such as the Netflix original comedy ‘A pesar de todo’ (‘Despite Everything’), the romantic comedy ‘¿Qué te juegas?’ (‘Get Her... If You Can’) – in which she played the lead alongside Javier Rey, and the comedy film ‘Lo dejo cuando quiera’ (‘I Can Quit Whenever I Want’). The same year, she appeared in the short comedy video ‘El Hormiguero: Vacaciones en el Titanic’. She has also acted on stage a couple times, playing Electra in ‘La Orestíada’ (2017) and Ío in ‘Prometeo’ (2019). In October 2020, she announced joining the cast of the Spanish thriller series ‘Todos mienten’, which aired on Movistar Plus+ in January 2022. Her other recent appearances were in the short film ‘Barcelona Surf Destination’ and the Netflix thriller series ‘Bienvenidos a Edén’, in which she played Astrid. While the series has already been renewed for a second season, she is all set to appear in another series, ‘Dos años y un día’, as well as a number of films including ‘Por los pelos’, ‘The Man from Rome’, ‘Tension of Sexual’ and ‘El Gerente’.
