Ágata Lys

Actress (b. Valladolid, Spain, Dec. 3, 1953). After having studied simultaneously Philosophy and Art and Speech (both careers remained unfinished), she became a household name overnight as one of the pretty and "bespectacled" hostesses of the top-rated TV contest "1, 2, 3, Responda Otra Vez", where she popularized what was going to be her early screen persona: platinum blonde-dyed hair, provocative ways and a sensuality always ready to break out. She made her film debut in 1972, at 19, and acquired an enormous popularity thanks to her tremendous sex-appeal and a clever promotion campaign that exploited a certain similarity between her looks and those of the late Marilyn Monroe to the extent of making a successful movie named precisely "The New Marilyn" (1976). She kept this image for a while (especially in her spectacular TV appearances in the mid-70s), but eventually got tired of it and decided to cut off her hair completely (she did it herself with a pair of scissors borrowed from a filming kit) and let it grow its natural dark colour again. Blonde or brunette, Lys grabbed a long string of femme fatale roles in films of each and every genre (thrillers, comedies, dramas, westerns, etc.) and turned into some kind of domestic myth at that time. (She also had the advantage of owning a fine diction that matched her thought-provoking voice perfectly, so, unlike some other actresses of that era, she didn't need to be dubbed.) Anyway, after leading her bold image one step further i…