Daily Inspiration: Meet Natalia Prieto

Today we’d like to introduce you to Natalia Prieto.

Hi Natalia, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.

I started acting when I was seven. In my second year of school I brought in the most beautiful clothes I owned — I was already completely in love with this art. That same year my theater teacher asked if I wanted to compete, and I started entering children’s theater festivals. I won Best Actress or a Special Jury Prize every single year of my childhood.

At 14, I found myself in a theater company where I was the only minor — everyone else was an adult — doing classical Greek theater. I was almost always cast in the chorus, which is such a central figure in Greek and Roman theater, but I couldn’t wait to grow up and play the characters I found truly fascinating: Helen of Troy, Antigone, Electra, Medea, Lady Macbeth. I wasn’t in a regular school — my whole world was the adults in that company — and I remember feeling like I’d lost the ability to relate to kids my own age.

I come from a family that valued art deeply. Everyone practiced it, in one way or another — it just was never anyone’s profession. Then everything changed, and I had the chance to see life from so many different angles — socioeconomically, culturally. It deepened my curiosity about the human experience, and that curiosity is what eventually brought me back to acting. I stopped acting completely for a while, because survival came first. Looking back, I think it’s exactly what lets me build a character from the ground up — I’ve lived on both sides of the line most people only imagine.

Between 14 and 21, I took a real hiatus. I wanted a normal adolescence, so I tried to live an ordinary life, far from the arts. But at 21, I understood my heart wasn’t going to buy it. I felt empty, honestly miserable, for having walked away from my true nature. So I went back — enrolled in film school, started my acting degree, began working with professors who ran their own production companies, went to Spanish film festivals, built my network.

I graduated in the middle of the pandemic, and the following year, in 2021, I moved to Madrid. I’d already built a name for myself in the Canary Islands by then. I was born in the north of Spain, in A Coruña, Galicia, but raised in the Canary Islands — think of it as Spain’s version of Puerto Rico.

When I came to Madrid, I knew it wasn’t going to be easy. I needed a survival job while I built an acting career in a city where nobody knew me, so I chose to work for one of the five most important Italian luxury fashion houses in the world — I’ve always loved the finest things in life. To some, luxury can look superficial, but to me it’s mesmerizing. The clearest proof, for me, is diamonds: I’m fascinated by the idea that humanity found a way to encapsulate light itself, and wear it.

As a client advisor there, I got to know the world of the elite from the inside. Seeing it up close opened up a whole new layer of humanity for me, on top of everything I’d already lived. I’m fascinated by social dynamics, by how environment shapes behavior — that’s actually my favorite way to build a character, starting with the world around them. I think that gives you 75% of the character right there.

Everything I’ve lived has taught me to see the world from so many different angles, and that’s made me richer as an actress. I was born into privilege, then lived without it, beside people whose realities were nothing like the one I was born into — and I think every one of those stories deserves to be told and honored. That’s why my purpose as an actress is to give people back the hope they’ve lost. Cinema and theater aren’t just a mirror held up to humanity — they inspire us to believe. To believe another reality is possible. To believe there’s goodness in people’s hearts. To believe in dreams. That’s the most important thing there is.

It’s not a coincidence that in Spanish we call it your “pasión” — your passion — when we talk about your calling. I find that beautiful.

Another one: not long after I moved to Madrid, I wanted to work with a classical theater company holding a huge open casting call. There was some kind of technical error when I submitted my files — I was told I’d missed the deadline, that my files were the wrong size, that they weren’t even going to watch my tape.

So I decided to wrap my audition in beauty instead. I bought a replica of a Fabergé egg — one of the most famous treasures in human history — and hid a flash drive with my tape inside it. I perfumed the inside of the egg with Baccarat Rouge 540, put it in a box, scented the box with a different Kilian fragrance, and placed the whole thing inside a designer bag, misted with something lighter. Then I delivered it exactly like that. I didn’t just want them to watch my audition — I wanted to give them a performance. I wanted my work to arrive like a treasure, wrapped in beauty, because I believe the ultimate purpose of any artist is to give the world truth and beauty. In the end, they still didn’t let me audition. It doesn’t matter. I’m genuinely happy with how I handled it — it was deeply aligned with my relationship to my art. That’s the whole point.

Here’s one more. One Piece is a manga that’s helped me enormously throughout my life — it gave me courage and hope, I’ve always felt deeply connected to it. So when I found out Netflix was making the live-action adaptation, I asked my agent to get me an audition. It didn’t happen. So I filmed my own tape and posted it on my Instagram. It went viral — with real hate, but also a lot of love, especially from inside the One Piece fandom itself. I met genuinely wonderful people through that, people who share the same values. That’s the real power of great stories — they break down geographic, social, and environmental barriers and bring people together. It didn’t lead to the role. I’m still glad I did it, because I’m living according to my own dreams.

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?

I’m an actress. I’m deeply in love with classical theater — Greek, Roman, Shakespeare, Camus — but I love cinema just as much. A film set is my favorite place in the world.

In 2022, I won the Pilar Rey Award for Outstanding Actress at Festivalito, La Palma’s international film festival, for my role in Videobook. I didn’t go to the island planning to make a film — I went to shoot material for my own showreel. I ended up making an entire short film instead, which I called, fittingly, Videobook. If I had to name my specialty, I’d say it’s that: creating my own opportunities instead of waiting for someone to hand them to me.

I love awards, and I see them as a beautiful kind of recognition. But honestly, the best prize for me is simpler than that — when someone I’ve worked with calls me back to work with them again.

Is there a quality you most attribute to your success?

If I had to pick one, it’s that I don’t wait for permission. Every time the official path has closed on me — an audition I didn’t get, a door that shut — I’ve built my own way through instead of standing there waiting. That’s how Videobook happened, that’s how I ended up doing my own audition for a classical theater company, that’s how I got my One Piece tape in front of an audience when my agent couldn’t get me one. That instinct — to create the opportunity myself when nobody’s going to hand it to me — is the thing that’s actually gotten me anywhere.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nnataliaprieto?stkn=MWxicGU4YnUwaWtrOA%3D%3D&utm_source=qr
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/@nataliaprietoc?si=GWoTJ9ffr7A59TNX