Ana Torrent
Young Ana Torrent made her spectacular film debut as Ana in this film. Even the harshest critics of the movie can find glowing things to say about the astonishingly sensitive performance wrought from by Ana by director Victor Erice. Her enormous dark eyes so filled with tantalizing mystery represent perhaps the most memorable image in a film famous for its memorable images. Just seven-years-old and making her first film, Ana became easily confused on the set by the actors having different names than their characters and so Erice made the decision fairly early during shooting to simply change the names of the characters so that they were the same as the actor playing them. The history of film is littered with the names of child actors who never live up to the potential of their greatest childhood performances, but Ana Torrent joins that exclusive crowd alongside Jodie Foster and Kurt Russell who made a very successful transition into adult roles, having essentially never been out of the business since her debut and being nominated for major awards at least once every decade since The Spirit of the Beehive.
Isabel Tellería
At the other end of the spectrum is the young actress who plays Ana’s sister in the film. In some ways, Isabel Telleria is almost as memorable a presence in the film as Ana Torrent. The scene in which Isabel fools Ana into thinking she is dead is only as horrific and memorable a sequence as it is because Telleria completely sells to the audience as well that she has eaten a poisonous mushroom which foreshadows this scene earlier. Strangely, however, The Spirit of the Beehive remains the only credit on the gift young actress’ resume.
Fernando Fernández Gómez
At the other end of the spectrum from both Ana and Isabel in terms of experience brought to the set of the film is the actor who plays their father. By the time he made what would easily become his famous film, Gómez already had compiled an extensive resume as actor, writer, and director over the course of the first thirty years of what would eventually be a career in film spanning more than half a century. And as if that weren’t enough for one man, he also published six novels between 1986 and 1998. He is also a six-time winner of Spain’s equivalent to the Oscars, having won Goya Awards for acting, writing and directing.
Teresa Gimpera
Teresa Gimpera plays the mother of Ana and Isabelle and Fernando’s husband, though most of her scenes feature her writing letters to a mysterious man who is may be a former lover. Gimpera had been making films since 1966 when she was cast in what turned out to be one of eight films released in 1973 in which she appears. Coincidentally, two of those films were horror movies while the original 1931 Universal Studios monster movie Frankenstein is central to the narrative of The Spirit of the Beehive.
