Rueda is cresting the ‘Sea Inside’

In “The Sea Inside,” Belen Rueda gives the performance of her career -- even though nothing on her resume suggested she would be remotely capable of delivering such a nuanced dramatic performance in a movie.

Before the Madrid-native was cast in director Alejandro Amenabar’s life-affirming biopic about Spanish quadriplegic Ramon Sampedro, whose 30-year campaign to be permitted an assisted suicide became a European cause celebre, Rueda’s occupational history was punctuated by a series of David Bowie-like persona shifts.

She started out more than a dozen years ago in a Vanna White capacity as a presenter on a TV game show, before graduating to cohosting duties on the Spanish equivalent of “Live With Regis and Kelly.” After making a successful name for herself as a television comedian, Rueda alternated between sitcoms and prime-time dramas -- Heather Locklear would be the rough American equivalent -- but had never appeared in a film.

When “The Sea Inside” debuted in Spain in September, with Rueda playing opposite Javier Bardem, she shocked many of her fans with her emotive portrayal of a lawyer-activist who falls in love with a man who wants to kill himself. The Fine Line Features drama is schedule to premiere Dec. 17 in Los Angeles.

“When you do a TV series here [in Spain], you are like a member of the family because you are in people’s houses,” Rueda, 39, said in halting English. “Many people think they know you -- and what you can do -- very well.”

Some were initially reluctant to accept her transformation.

“I don’t know if it’s nice for me to say or not,” she added, “but they said to me, ‘I didn’t know you could do it!’ ”

To beat out her more movie-savvy competition for the plum part, Rueda used the oldest ploy in the celebrity playbook: She begged the director for a part. “I asked him many, many times ... I did many [auditions] with him before he chose me,” Rueda recalled. When she remembers the director revealing who her costar would be, Rueda’s lack of English speaks volumes about her appraisal of Bardem: “When Alejandro told me that Javier was Ramon ... Oof. I was very happy about it!”

“The Sea Inside” also provided her with an edifying life experience. “Nobody wants to speak about death or about illness,” she says. “But life doesn’t exist without death. I learned the important thing is you are free to choose. And if you choose life, you learn to live your life more intensely. For this, I told Alejandro, ‘Thank you.’ ” As a result of her newly minted dramatic capacity, directors have been approaching Rueda, a divorced mother of two, with film roles. But she has declined all offers to stay true to her existing commitment, a Spanish sitcom called “Los Serrano” that bears a suspicious resemblance to a staple of American TV.

“On the series, I am a woman who has three daughters and my new husband has three sons,” she said. “Like the ‘Brady Bunch’? I don’t know what that is.”