Cristina Rota

María Cristina Rota Fernández (born 1945) is an Argentine-born playwright, actress, director and popular acting coach settled in Spain. Cristina Rota was born in 1945 in La Plata, Argentina. She has ancestors from the Canary Islands and Navarre. She studied Philosophy and Arts, after which she trained her acting chops, and—already in Argentina—began to primarily focus on drama coaching. With actor Diego Fernando Botto (kidnapped and assassinated during the Videla dictatorship) she had María and Juan Diego. She left Argentina for Spain in 1978 with her children, while she was pregnant of a third child, Nur Al Levi, from another partner. In addition to her three children, all thespians, many famous Spanish actors have trained in her school, including Penélope Cruz, Antonio de la Torre, Marta Etura and Raúl Arévalo.