Hot Topics:

Spain bestows pic prize on Verdu

Actress wins National Cinema Prize

Joost cuts off its Internet TV arm

Paramount shuts down N.Y. lit office

Second Pictures selects candidates

Bondarchuk connects with webizens

Thesps bear down on 'Yogi'(3167 views)

Bradley Cooper 'Fields' film offer(2229 views)

Awards season has officially arrived(1929 views)

Disney's 'Carol' rings in at box office(1643 views)

Johnny Depp in talks for 'Tourist'(1226 views)

Disaster pic '2012' bows in L.A.(1226 views)

MADRID -- Actress Maribel Verdu has won the National Cinema Prize awarded by the ICAA Spanish Film Institute, which comes with a E30,000 ($42,000) cash prize.

The prize was awarded for outstanding work or achievement in 2008, a year when Verdu, after four nominations, finally won a best actress Spanish Academy Goya for Gracia Querejeta's "Seven Billiard Tables"; played the femme lead in Jose Luis Cuerda's hit "The Blind Sunflowers"; and starred in Francis Ford Coppola's "Tetro," which opened Cannes Directors' Fortnight this year.

The prize tops multiple awards throughout a 25-year career. Verdu grabbed public attention in 1986 for Montxo Armendariz's "27 Hours," in which she played a junkie, and Fernando Trueba's "The Year of Awakening," in which she was the love interest.

Damned by good looks, which meant Verdu was regarded for years as a sex symbol as much as an actress, Verdu has delivered�some of her best performances in a mid-career flurry of pics that includes Alfonso Cuaron's "Y tu mama tambien," Guillermo del Toro's "Pan's Labyrinth" and "Tetro."