While she acted in 75 movies, she will be best remembered for the five films she starred in directed by Pedro Almodovar: "Dark Habits" (1983), "High Heels" (1991), "The Flower of My Secret" (1995), "All About My Mother" (1999) and "The Skin I Live In" (2011). Of all these, she thought she turned in one of her career-best performances in "The Flower of My Secret," which marks the beginning of Almodovar's return to his roots and world of his mother, a re-connection which continues to this day.
In "The Flower of My Secret," Paredes played a chic romantic novelist seemingly at first a fish out of water in the village where she was born.
She acted Spain's classic modern directors, beginning with Fernando Trueba in his 1980 debut "Opera Prima," in a role which ribbed her air of grand dame, showing her sense of humor. Later came starring roles, most notably in in Agusti Villaronga's "In a Glass Cage," (1986) but also Mexican Arturo Ripstein's "Deep Crimson" (1996) and "No One Writes to the Colonel" (1999) and Guillermo del Toro's "The Devil's Backbone" (2001).