Cecilia Suárez

Suárez was born and raised in Tampico, a small coastal area in the northern Mexican state of Tamaulipas. She says that there was no theater there, and that her parents shielded her from too much play-acting as a child because "childhood was something to prolong and respect". She has three sisters, including the director Mafer Suárez; her father was Engino "Ben" and her mother is Ma̰ Elena. Suárez also has family from Asturias, Spain, and holds Spanish dual nationality from her grandfather, an Asturian who emigrated to Mexico.Suárez has said she never dreamed of being an actor. She moved to the United States in 1991 for university, attending Illinois State University; having intended to study law, she instead moved into theater, inspired by her older sister Mafer. She graduated as valedictorian of the theater program in 1995, receiving the Jean Scharfenberg Scholarship. As she left college, she also received the Steppenwolf Theatre Acting Fellowship Award, and her debut was at Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre. With ties to the city, she is still a member of the Chicago-based Theater with a View/Teatro Vista group. While in Illinois, Suárez performed the lead role in several classical plays, and took part in the Illinois Shakespeare Festival. In the late 1990s she starred in Sex, Shame and Tears, the second film of the Nuevo Cine Mexicano, which was "her first triumph". When asked about her experience making Sex, Shame and Tears, she responded that she remembers it very positively, because it is how she "became a part of the story of the cinema of [her] country".

Around this time, Suárez met future filmmaker Manolo Caro, when he was 14 years old. She went to a recital at his school in Guadalajara; her cousin was Caro's teacher and introduced the pair. Caro then studied architecture, but they became friends when he moved to Mexico City to pursue filmmaking. Suárez is described as Caro's muse, and she has starred in all but one of his works; she did not have a role in Amor de mis amores because Caro "did not want to force it".

After the success of Sex, Shame and Tears, Suárez worked largely in major motion pictures in the early 2000s, including in Hollywood films Spanglish, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, and The Air I Breathe. This was complemented with work across Mexican film and television. Suárez worked alongside actor Gael García Bernal on multiple occasions in both mediums, as well as with the director Ernesto Contreras, having acclaimed roles in two of his films. She also continued successfully working in theater, having roles alongside Juan Manuel Bernal on the stage as well as in film and television during this period. During the 2000s she was nominated for her first Ariel Award, among other accolades. She began starring in the HBO series Capadocia in 2008, first playing female prisoner La Bambi and then returning to the show as a prison psychologist after Bambi died. As the show dealt with more intense topics and was one of the first shows based around different personalities in a women's prison, Suárez spent time researching and then mentally preparing for both roles. In 2009, she was nominated for an Emmy Award for playing La Bambi, being the first Spanish-speaking actress to receive such a nomination.

In the 2010s, Caro began his career as a successful director and screenwriter. Suárez starred in his works, as well as the works of her sister, among other projects. After her son was born in 2010 she chose to stay in Mexico City for work. Despite many of her films from this period being attached to Caro, Suárez says she does not feel boxed-in as an actress, nor like she is playing it safe, as she works with Caro on projects that she knows he has put a lot of care into and that are challenging.

Suárez starred in the film Nos vemos, papá, which focuses on how grief is expressed, exploring this through her character's response to the death of her father. The film was released shortly after Suárez's own father died at the end of 2012. Suárez said that though it was "a remarkable coincidence" to her family, she believed it was "no accident", and that her role in the film had happened to help her deal with her own grief.

Following her second Ariel nomination in 2015, Suárez took roles in 2016 in the Netflix original series Sense8 and the Netflix-distributed film Macho, as well as the comedy film Cuando los hijos regresan with Carmen Maura. In 2017 she joined Netflix again, signing on to play a role in another original created by Caro, The House of Flowers, also beginning work on the American film Overboard. Gaining international recognition for her role as Paulina de la Mora in The House of Flowers, Suárez remained with the streaming network to star in more works created by Caro and voice a role in the Spanish-language version of Netflix's first animated feature film.

Alejandro Mancilla, profiling the actress in 2018, wrote that although Suárez does not like working in telenovelas and only did a few at the start of her career, "the essence of Suárez is in her work in movies and series whose content and setting is eminently Mexican". She primarily works in the Spanish language and in Mexico on Mexican productions, not being supportive of "American culture's version" of Mexican narratives and disliking being offered only stereotypical roles. However, she has explained that she has no objection to working in Hollywood when the role is right, having only taken a break from international productions to settle down when her son was born – she also took a four-year break from theater after becoming pregnant. Her first Hollywood film was 2004's Spanglish; she says she took the role because she wanted to work with its director, James L. Brooks. She has said that she enjoys playing diverse roles and performing in different genres.

In 2015, Suárez directed a short play, saying she would consider more directing, but only in theater; she says theater is her "greatest passion" and "refuge". She also has a program called TNT + Film, where she presents interviews, facts, and news about Mexican cinema. In 2009 she wrote the chapter "Una habitación propia" ("A room of one's own") for the book Gritos y susurros II: experiencias intempestivas de otras 39 mujeres.