Belén Cuesta Spanish Actress Born 1984 in Seville

Early life

Belén Cuesta Llamas was born on 24 January 1984 in Seville, Spain. She later moved to Málaga, and she spent her childhood and teenage years in Fuengirola. Her training in drama was at the Escuela Superior de Arte Dramático.

Career

Cuesta is known first of all as a stage actress, and she has also worked in television, in film and in commercials. Her television debut was in Cazadores de hombres. She followed it with small parts in series including ¿Qué fue de Jorge Sanz?, Ángel o demonio and Palomitas, and in films such as Operación Malaya and Perro flaco. Her earliest credit in the screen records on this site is the film Hierro (2009).

Her first steady television job came in 2012, when she joined the daily period drama Bandolera as Elisa de Vega, a wealthy woman. The role that brought her wide popularity was Magüi Moreno, the assistant to the title character in the comedy series Paquita Salas (2016). Some of the character's lines became viral. In 2017 she joined Money Heist, playing Manila, a member of the group of robbers who at first passes as a hostage inside the Bank of Spain. That series is by far her best-documented credit, with entries in dozens of language editions of the encyclopedia.

Film work has run alongside television. In the middle of the decade she appeared in Ocho apellidos catalanes (2015), in which Berto Romero also acted, and in Kiki, el amor se hace (2016). She was billed third in Holy Camp! (2017), and fourth in The Warning (2018). In 2019 she took part in Advantages of Travelling by Train, Despite Everything and Litus, and she played the lead in The Endless Trench. The People Upstairs (2020) gave her another prominent role, billed third, and she was billed first in the comedy The Wedding Unplanner the same year. Later films include Historias para no contar (2022), directed by Cesc Gay, who also directed another of her titles, and A Boyfriend for My Wife (2022).

Her recent television work includes Cristo y Rey and Romancero (both 2023), in which she was billed second, and Cristóbal Balenciaga (2024), where she played Fabiola of Belgium. In Cristo y Rey her character was Bárbara Rey. The latest title on record is the film 5 More Minutes (2026), in which she is billed second. In all, her screen credits number twenty-six, spanning 2009 to 2026.

Recognition

Cuesta won the Goya Award for Best Actress in 2020 for her leading performance in The Endless Trench. In the same year she also received the Premio Feroz for Best Main Actress for that film. The two honours are the awards recorded for her so far, and both are tied to the same role.

Personal life

Cuesta lives in Madrid. Her work spans several genres: comedy is the most frequent in her listed titles, with six entries, followed by action and drama with two each, and the film that earned her the Goya is a drama. Among her recurring colleagues, Alba Flores and Brays Efe each appear alongside her in two titles.