Moria Casán

Ana María Casanova was born in the Buenos Aires neighborhood of Villa Crespo in 1946. She made her debut on the boards of the Teatro El Nacional in 1969, almost by chance and without asking anyone's permission.

Standing almost six feet tall, with razor-sharp diction and a total lack of shyness in front of the camera, she made her mark on Argentine show business. They nicknamed her Moria Casán.

The public devoured the formula right away.

The box office powerhouse of Buenos Aires' daring style

During the 1970s and 1980s, commercial cinema in Argentina ran under the relentless rules of the theaters on Lavalle Street. Moria Casán made dozens of racy comedies with the production company Aries Cinematográfica and working directors such as Gerardo Sofovich and Enrique Carreras.

Hits like Los caballeros de la cama redonda in 1973 and Expertos en pinchazos in 1979 packed movie theaters while critics of auteur cinema looked the other way with aristocratic disdain. The films were shot in three weeks on minimal budgets and were commercial smashes, thanks to the chemistry with Alberto Olmedo and Jorge Porcel.

Moria would not accept the role of passive decoration. She demanded the same screen time as the male comedians, and earned exactly the same salary as the biggest stars on the marquee.

In 1980 she premiered A los cirujanos se les va la mano, and a year later Las mujeres son cosa de guapos. When the military dictatorship tightened film censorship, she learned to slip in quick double entendres that dodged the censors' scissors without scaring off box office audiences.

But the business of daring humor had an expiration date.

The queen of the karate-style tongue

The return of democracy forced a search for new formats. Casán realized the body expires before the word, and decided to unleash a merciless verbal style in text-based theater and late-night television.

In 1991 she premiered the dramatic comedy Brujas, directed by Luis Agustoni. That production, about five women talking about social hypocrisy and bedroom secrets, stayed on stage for more than three decades and drew over a million and a half spectators in Buenos Aires.

No one expected an actress forged in revue theater to carry a dramatic text with such coolness. Her acting style did not seek the audience's tears but the sharpness of the dry comeback.

Director Raúl de la Torre cast her in 1993 for Funes, un gran amor, where she shared scenes with Gian Maria Volonté and Graciela Borges. In that film Casán lowered her voice, dropped the laughter and built a sober character that puzzled the gossip press.

Then came her reign over television studios with late-night shows such as A la cama con Moria in 1991 and Monumental Moria. She created a distinctive way of speaking that Argentine popular culture ended up adopting. Razor-sharp replies, calculated silences and verbal battles fueled the ratings of the private channels.

Shakespeare at seventy-five

In 2022, director José María Muscari asked her to put on a laurel crown and step onto the stage to play a Roman dictator. Casán agreed to lead Julio César, a loose version of the Shakespearean classic in which the male roles were played by actresses.

The play opened in July 2022 as the sixty-eighth edition of the International Classical Theater Festival of Mérida, Spain. Stepping onto the stage of the Roman theater of Mérida before more than two thousand spectators demanded breath control and a presence that many doubted she still had at that age. She walked onstage in dark sportswear, sunglasses and a military stride.

Spanish critics didn't quite know how to classify her.

In 2026, Netflix premiered the biographical series Moria, created by Javier van de Couter, in which Sofía Gala Castiglione and Cecilia Roth recreated different periods of her life while Casán served as the central narrator.

The registry of the Argentine Society of Authors lists more than sixty theater and film productions linked to her name. Behind her are twelve lawsuits over television remarks, a failed run for national deputy in 2005, and an arrest in Paraguay in 2015 over the disappearance of a diamond necklace valued at eighty thousand dollars. The Luque court dropped the criminal case after a private financial settlement of thirty-five thousand dollars.