Portuguese actress, film director and singer. She studied philosophy at the Sorbonne, in Paris. She studied drama at the Conservatoire National d´Art of the French capital, before making her debut in professional theater, where she earned praise while waiting for an opportunity in the big screen. It came in 1984, in the collective film Paris vu par... vingt ans aprés, and since then she has successfully combined French and Portuguese films. She became famous thanks to A morte do principe, Cita con Venus or Huevos de oro, her debut in Spanish cinema, to which she has always been closely linked.

She made her debut in Hollywood thanks to Tarantino in Pulp Fiction in 1994, the highlight of her film career. El detective y la muerte, Airbag, Babel, Mi vida sin mí or Sueño y silencio set the bar high while María diversified her creative inquisitiveness by making her debut as a director in 2000 with the film Capitanes de abril. She also published her highly acclaimed first solo album, A Little More Blue, in 2007. In all, cinema continues to be a priority in her agenda, either behind the camera as a documentary maker or in front of it, in films like Viagem a Portugal, Pollo con ciruelas, Pasolini, 100 metros, Black is Beltza or Onyx, los reyes del grial.