HOW DID THAT PROFESSIONALLY PREPARE YOU FOR THE NEXT STEP TO TRY YOUR HAND AT HOLLYWOOD? That wasn’t planned. It felt very organic. My first movie in the States was ‘Hands of Stone’, and it was a movie in Spanish, and I was playing a Panamanian. So for me, it felt more Cuban actually than American. It was a movie made by Latinos, for Latinos, about a Latino. I was like in my waters, you know what I mean? So that transition, I guess, I don’t know. Spain, at the time, also had the economic crisis happening, and no movies were really getting made. What was being made, I was not inspired by. The TV show helped me a lot, that TV series I did. It was about a boarding school. It was a kind of thriller. It was very successful and great. It was one of the best things that ever happened to my career, because that changed my life. But it also affected me, because I was wearing a school uniform for three years. So it was hard to get rid of that. I was really craving to play a woman, an adult. I was not getting those roles, because they still looked at me like the school girl. So I was very frustrated at that time, because it was hard to change that image people had of me. So then ‘Hands of Stone’ happened, the character where I’m a wife with four kids, and I start as a school girl, but I finished like 30 years old with a lot going on. That was the character I was dreaming of, to finally be a woman.
WERE YOU QUICK TO ADAPT LANGUAGE-WISE? I had to. I guess your brain gets into survival mode or something. I don’t know what it is. It’s all about the way you take things. If for you, you’re going to school and learning grammar and doing homework, like this is the worst thing ever. ‘What the f--k am I doing here? I don’t need to do this. If they want me, they want me the way I am.’ You have that attitude and you’re fighting against it, then you’re not enjoying. It’s not going to stick with you because you’re rejecting it already, what you have to do. For me, it was the opposite. It was like I was learning a new super power, and I was learning how to use it. I always saw actors like Penelope [Cruz]. I could tell how hard it was for her at the beginning to feel and to act in English, because it was a different part of your brain. I always thought, I have to get good at that. I have to be able to feel and not to think about what I’m saying. I just want to feel it. I was very excited I was learning the language. Very excited. So I guess that also helped, because your body is like receiving that information a different way. I always tell my agents, ‘I’m doing classes, but I want to go to meetings now, and I want to audition now.’ ‘No, but your accent’ – ‘I don’t care about the accent. I don’t care. I want to do it, and I don’t want to audition for Maria, and Juana, none of that. I want to audition for the same parts everyone else is auditioning for. And I’ll make the difference. I’ll make them change their minds.’ At the beginning, it was a disaster. Nobody understood what I was saying. Even I couldn’t understand the con- text of what I was reading. I remember little phrases like, ‘I beg your pardon?’ Or stuff like that. I had no clue what I was saying. But I knew emotionally what the scene was about. So my feelings were in the right place. My mouth was going somewhere else. But that, I guess that made directors like Todd Phillips change their minds.
LOOKING AT THE EARLY JOBS YOU GOT YOU WORKED WITH SOME PRETTY AMAZING PEOPLE. A LOT OF PEOPLE WOULD BE LUCKY TO BE GETTING COMMERCIALS. SO THAT MUST HAVE BEEN A GREAT EDUCATION FOR YOU TO BE RIGHT THERE WITH SO MUCH FILMMAKING TALENT, SO MUCH ACTING TALENT, AT SUCH A FORMATIVE POINT IN YOUR OWN CAREER. Yeah. It was great. It was great. As I said, I feel very insecure many
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times. It was also very inspiring, and it was a good exercise for my ego too, because after having a long eight-year career in Spain, and you’re known by every single person on the planet because you’ve been on the famous TV show in Spain, and every single person knows who you are, you have a career, you don’t have to introduce yourself, you don’t have to do anything which was getting boring for me. It was good to come back, and to really fight for things, and to remember what’s like - I don’t like competition. I think it’s stupid. Because everyone has something different to offer. I will never do the same as any other actress, because she’s special and I’m special. But if I have to compare myself to someone, I wanted to do it with the best one, because that is inspiring for me. And I want to know that I’m auditioning for the same part as another actress that I really admire. Even if I don’t get it. Even sometimes I get a call from my agents and say, ‘No, it went to…’, whatever. I’m like, ‘Of course, because she’s the best.’ But I had the chance. I had the chance to try.
ALL THAT TRYING GETS YOU IN FRONT OF PEOPLE WHO WILL REMEMBER YOU WHEN THAT ROLE IS RIGHT. Right, exactly, exactly. It’s always good to try.
HOW DID YOU MIX THAT, PUTTING YOURSELF OUT THERE AS MUCH AS YOU DID, WITH BEING PARTICULAR ABOUT THE KIND OF PARTS THAT YOU WANTED TO PLAY? WAS THAT A DIFFICULT ROAD TO NAVIGATE? Yeah, still is. There are two things. First, what they think that you can bring to the table, what you can bring to the character to offer, and what you can really offer. But sometimes they already make a decision before you ever get there. And once you get there, then there is another step that’s like, you don’t look how I was imagining you. Because some of them, they don’t even bother to Google your photo. You’re like, ‘Oh, but you’re blonde, and green eyes, and so white. Are you Cuban? Cuban from where? From Miami? No, from Cuba. You’re Cuban, you’re from Cuba’. Like all those kind of steps of being labelled, or being put in just the image they have in their
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