Film director Pedro Almodovar was born on September 24, 1951, in Castilla-La Mancha, Spain.
He entered boarding school at the age of eight. In 1967, he moved to Madrid with dreams of becoming a film director, but the National Film School was closed by the then-dictator Franco's regime. As a result, Pedro moved from job to job and taught himself about film.
After the collapse of the Franco regime in 1975, Spain experienced a huge boom in anti-authoritarian music, painting, and video. Pedro was active in a variety of fields, contributing cartoons to magazines and belonging to a punk band, but in 1980 he made his directorial debut with the feature film "Pepi lusi bom y otras chicas del montón." From then on, he continued to release one film a year, winning the Venice Film Festival's Best Original Screenplay Award for 1988's Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. The film was also nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, catapulting Pedro to worldwide recognition.
He went on to win the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1999 for All About My Mother and the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay in 2002 for Talk to Her, establishing him as one of Spain's leading film directors. His films often tackle taboo subjects like homosexuality, drugs, and AIDS, but his unique scripts and dark humor continue to captivate countless movie fans.
His films are characterized by vibrant, colorful imagery, often dominated by vibrant reds. This sense of color is also reflected in the actors' costumes, which are very fashionable. In the 2009 film "Broken Embrace," lead actress Penelope Cruz appeared in a crimson dress and Christian Louboutin high heels, captivating fans with her passionate fashion. Fashion designer Jean Paul Gaultier often designs costumes, including Gael Garcia Bernal's cross-dressing costumes for the semi-autobiographical film "Bad Education," based on his own experiences at a boarding school, and full-body designs for "Kika" and "The Skin I Live In." A Gaultier shopping bag appears in the hospital room in "Talk to Her."
