Maria João was born in Benavente, Santarém District. She holds a degree in Communication Sciences from the Independent University of Lisbon. Maria took an English course in England in 1993, a casting and video and dummy course at Visual LX in 1994 and a theater, film and television course in New York City in the year 2000. She signed an exclusive contract with The Portuguese television station, TVI.
She was the winner of the Golden Globe (Portugal) 2011 as Best Film Actress for her performance in the Portuguese film Mysteries of Lisbon.
Bastos is ambassador of the Jaguar car brand, and representative of the Italian brand Furla, in Portugal. Her character "Liliane Marise", in the novel Destinos Cruzados, was so remarkable that it released a CD that reached first place in the top of Portugal. Incarnating this same personage, also it made a concert in MEO Arena, in Lisbon, October 2013, and another in Guimarães, in the same month. In 2015 she was juror of the Ídolos program at SIC.
