Diego luna

Born on December 29, 1979 in Mexico City, Diego Dionisio Luna Alexander comes from a family closely linked to the theater scene, as his father, Alejandro Luna, was a set designer, and his mother, Fiona Alexander, gained immense prestige as a designer. wardrobe, although he died when the boy was 2 years old. “He takes care of me from above,” the actor often comments.

With such precedents, it is hardly surprising that at the age of 8 Diego Luna was already in front of the cameras, in the short film El último fin de báter . He had only one more when he appeared in his first telenovela, El abuelo y yo , where he had as co-star another actor who was going to be of great importance in his career, Gael García Bernal .

He made his film debut as a secondary player without much relevance in Ámbar , a Mexican adventure production directed by Luis Estrada in 1993. During the rest of the decade, Diego Luna appeared in numerous telenovelas with which he gained enormous experience. He also appears from time to time in a theatrical production, and in a feature film, such as the American production Before Night Falls , a biopic of the Cuban writer Reinaldo Arenas, played by Javier Bardem , where his intervention is very brief.

Luna rose to stardom in her native Mexico, with Alfonso Cuarón ‘s Y tu mamá también . She shared the limelight with the aforementioned Gael García Bernal . She played Tenoch, the son of a high-ranking politician, who along with his friend Julio (García Bernal) embarks on a road trip to take a Spanish woman ( Maribel Verdú ) to visit a beautiful beach. It was enormously successful in various countries, including the United States.

Since then, Luna has been called upon from Spain at times, for example to play a student of Ariadna Gil , in Soldados de Salamina . On other occasions, he packs his bags and heads to the United States, to play the orphan Button, a day laborer at the service of a veteran cowboy in Open Range , directed by Kevin Costner , or to star in a remake that is as late as it is dispensable of Dirty Dancing ( Dirty dancing 2), where he had a hard time because it was difficult for him to learn the dances. “I have two left feet,” he told me during an interview to promote the film. “It’s one thing to get drunk at a party and move around a bit, it’s another to take someone.” Another American, the filmmaker Julie Taymor signed him to play the first boyfriend of the protagonist in Frida , along with his compatriot De ella Salma Hayek .

He is even required by Steven Spielberg himself for a relevant role in The Terminal , where he becomes the person in charge of moving the food from the planes, who, like a good Samaritan, offers food to the protagonist ( Tom Hanks ), but whose shyness does not allow him to getting closer to the immigration clerk ( Zoe Saldana ) with whom he has fallen in love. “The day I did a casting with him, something really good must have happened to Steven Spielberg , so great that it put him in a very good mood and he decided to hire me to shoot the movie,” joked the Mexican.

Sometimes Diego Luna returns to Mexico to shoot a film like the inspired Nicotina , but as a general rule he has continued to alternate between the United States ( My name is Harvey Milk , Contraband , My Father’s House ) and Spain ( I just want to walk ). “In Mexico there is no decent cultural policy. Culture matters little to the government. There is no support, nor an initiative that protects Mexican talent. That is why people leave Mexico when they are successful.”

He coincided again with Gael García Bernal , playing his brother in Rudo y Cursi , by Carlos Cuarón , brother of the director of Y tu mamá también , and screenwriter of that title. Lately, Luna has stood out as Julio, the friend of the protagonist ( Matt Damon ) in Neill Blompkamp’s Elysium , a science fiction film in which the rich live in a sophisticated space station and the poor survive on Earth, which has been devastated. .

Not only has he limited himself to acting as an actor, but Diego Luna made his debut as a director with JC Chávez , a documentary about a boxer that he later turned into a dramatized film, Chávez , in which Michael Peña embodies the character. He is also the author of Abel , about a boy who, after going through a mental institution, must assume adult responsibilities.

As for his love life, Diego Luna seemed to have settled down after marrying Camila Sodi, a Mexican actress, in 2008. The marriage had two children, Jerónimo (born in 2008) and Fiona (who came into the world in 2010), but although it seemed that everything was going well, Luna recently announced the divorce.