Actress Isabel Torres, died at the same age – 52 – as the character she played: Cristina Ortiz, alias The VenenoSpanish transgender muse of the 1990s whose sulphurous life was recounted in this series.
“Goodbye Isabel. As family members and friends, we are deeply saddened by her departure, but we know that wherever she is, she will enjoy herself as only she knew how to do”, can we read on the official Instagram account of the actress. “Thank you for the testimonies of tenderness and affection received. She left loved and surrounded”, the publication says again.
Born in the Spanish archipelago of the Canaries, Isabel Torres suffered from lung cancer. In November, she said goodbye to her “followers” on social networks by explaining that the doctors had told her that she only had two months left to live. “If I manage to get out of it, I will reconnect. And if I can’t, it will have been a pleasure to have known you, to have been with you and to live this so beautiful experience that we call the life”she then said in a moving video.
The actress had acted in several films but rose to fame thanks to Veneno, series broadcast in Spain in October 2020 and then a few months later on the international HBO platform. First transgender candidate in 2015 to become Queen of the famous carnival of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Isabel Torres had learned that she had cancer in 2018, the same year in which she had been chosen to interpret The Veneno.
It was “a wonderful actress who made us all vibrate”wrote the Spanish Minister for Equality Irene Montero. “Rest in peace, you left too soon”she added.
Disfruté viendo a Isabel Torres en ‘La Veneno’, una maravillosa actriz que nos hizo vibrar a todas.
Que la tierra te se leve, ojalá no te hubieras ido tan pronto, Isabel. Un abrazo para todos sus seres queridos. pic.twitter.com/0dmF0DKY5U
— Irene Montero (@IreneMontero) February 11, 2022
In Veneno, Isabel Torres was one of three actresses portraying on screen, at different times in her life, this icon who helped make transgender people visible in Spain. media figure, The Venenowho had been in prison for fraud, died at the age of 52 in 2016. Under the influence of alcohol and anxiolytics, she suffered a brain injury after falling in her bathroom.