Belén Rueda

María Belén Rueda García-Porrero was born in Madrid on 16 March 1965. Her father was a civil engineer and her mother was a ballet instructor. She is the second of three children; her siblings are named María Jesús and Alfonso. She and her family moved to San Juan, Alicante when she was a child. When Rueda was 18 years old she moved to Madrid to study architecture. While she was a student, she made her television debut as a steward in the night-show VIP Noche originally hosted by José Luis Moreno [es], eventually becoming the co-host together with Emilio Aragón. While she had been already cast as the photographer Clara Nadal for the series Periodistas she was called to briefly play the same character of Clara Nadal in the popular dramedy Médico de familia (also produced by Globomedia) as a sort of emergency casting to cover a leave on absence, and thus the latter marked her debut as a television actress in 1997 (and both fictions became connected in the same fictional universe). She went then on to play the character of Clara Nadal in Periodistas from 1998 to 2002.