A Field Guide To Elena Anaya

Since the tabloids are talking about how Elena Anaya is a lesbian nudist, we figured she deserves a Field Guide. If not to point out the other cool things about Anaya's life (like being Pedro Almodovar's latest muse), then at least to remind people that "Room in Rome" was a ridiculously hot piece of cinema.

But let's start where we always start. Elena Anaya was born in Palencia, Castilla y León, Spain on July 17, 1975. She spent her youth studying karate, climbing mountains (swoon), and transferring from school to school. She was once expelled from a private school for playing with fire extinguishers with a group of mischievous girls, but she was always a bright student, and by the time she was finished with high school, she had decided to pursue a serious acting career. Anaya set her sights on Real Escuela Superior de Arte Dramático, the finest drama school in Madrid.

However, just as she was taking her exams to enter RESAD, filmmaker Alfonso Ungría invited her to audition for his movie, "Africa," and she landed her first big role at the same time she was accepted to the school; classes started in October, shooting for "Africa" started in November, and when she came back to RESAD in January, her teacher asked her to stop attending class. Her classmates protested, but the teachers weren't going to take her back; it's for the best though, because Anaya was soon approached by Basque filmmaker Fernando León de Aranoa to take a part in her next film, "Familia."

Anaya erupted into the international consciousness with the 2001 film "Lucia y el sexo," in which she plays a very sexy babysitter and, well, she has sex with Tristan Ulloa and it's great. Non-pervy American viewers probably know her best as Aleera, the vampire bride from "Van Helsing." Anaya says that she always studies animals before beginning a new role, so she began studying bats. "I wanted to imitate the posture of the hands, the use of nails and mouth, the piercing glance, the quietness that anticipates a sudden attack." Oh, and she also appears in the video for Justin Timberlake's "Sexyback."

We first forged a crush on Elena Anaya when we saw her in "Room in Rome," a story about two women who meet in Rome and spend their last night together, in bed and in the bath, learning things about themselves and each other. (You can imagine how much we enjoyed this movie.) Of course, we immediately thought of "Room in Rome" when this whole lesbian nudist thing started going around online, and we wondered whether or not the movie had anything to do with her sexual awakening, but we realized that's kinda silly. Also, it's not our business. We'll keep watching Elena even if she decides to be a very clothed heterosexual.

[Pictures via In The Raw (itr2010.org)]

[jwplayer id="7184828"]

[Original post: No Boys Allowed In The "Room In Rome"]
[From "Sex and Lucia" (2001) (imdb.com)]
[From "Van Helsing" (2004) (imdb.com)]