Rossy de Palma was working as a waitress in a rockabilly bar when she met Pedro Almodóvar, prince of the underground film scene in 1980s Madrid. Four decades on, she remains one of the director’s regular collaborators – a vivid, volatile figure in films such as Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown and The Flower of My Secret. She’s also acted for Robert Altman and Terry Gilliam, modelled for Alexander McQueen and Jean Paul Gaultier, and released her own line of cosmetic products. Almodóvar’s latest film, Parallel Mothers, is a tale of fraught maternal mix-ups and buried secrets from the Spanish civil war. De Palma, 57, plays the confidante of Penélope Cruz’s troubled heroine.
Hi Rossy, where are you? I thought you lived in Madrid.
No, I’m at a wellness clinic, near Alicante. Macrobiotic food. Watsu massages. And look, I’ll show you the Mediterranean – you can see it from the balcony. It is a very good place.
