Carmen Sevilla, a beguiling actor, singer and dancer who became one of the biggest stars of mid-century Spanish cinema, then gained a wider audience playing Mary Magdalene – opposite matinee idol Jeffrey Hunter as Jesus – in the 1961 Hollywood epic King of Kings, has died aged 92.
Sevilla was a glamorous queen of Fifties and Sixties Spanish film, drawing comparisons to actor Ava Gardner with her sculpted features, flowing dark hair and high-arching eyebrows. Admirers nicknamed her “la novia de Espana”, the bride or sweetheart of Spain, and her fans included Pope John XXIII, who sent a congratulatory telegram when she married composer and conductor Augusto Alguero in 1961, at a wedding ceremony that reportedly attracted tens of thousands of people to the plaza outside the cathedral in Zaragoza.
