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Diego Luna Interview Feb, 2003 by Alfonso Cuaron |
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Unforgettable as the poor little rich boy at the heart of 2002's
smash Y Tu Mama también, Diego Luna made his jarring onscreen
loss of innocence alternately comic, tragic, and erotic-often
all at once. That attention-grabbing turn turned Luna into a
superstar in his native Mexico, thrusting him into the inner
circle of creative forces that have turned Mexico's film scene
into an international success story.
ALFONSO CUARON: [In Spanish] Diego? Nice to meet you. DIEGO LUNA: [laughs] Nice to meet you!
AC: Okay. We should talk in English. DL: [In English] Me be happy to hear you.
AC: [laughs] Okay. So, Diego, tell me what things have happened to you since our film Y Tu Mama también? DL: Well, there have been a lot of changes. I had to start to do interviews in English. And I've started to work more in my country.
AC: Which country is that? DL: [laughs] Mexico. You know, this little province that is not in the United States.
AC: Mexico, huh? "La Cucaracha," right? DL: And mariachi. I've started to travel, finally.
AC: Legally or illegally? DL: Legally! I have my visa. And I have started to receive a lot of scripts, in English and Spanish. I started to realize that there are things an actor has to do, like have an agent, a publicist, do promotion, meet with people, travel.
AC: Hmm. Do you have a personal trainer? DL: No. And I need one now for my next movie.
AC: Put it in the contract. A lawyer? DL: I have a lawyer now, yeah.
AC: Okay, good. An acting coach? DL: Not yet. I'm going to have a dialect coach for the next one, though.
AC: A driver? DL: I do have a driver. Now I can sleep in the car. I have more time to do what I like to do. And I don't feel that I have to keep working.... Anyway, I had the chance to do this western called Open Range [due out this summer] with Robert Duvall and Kevin Costner [who also directs]. I play a Mexican cowboy. That movie was a big change in my life. I had to spend three months in Canada, speaking in English the whole day.
AC: Did you get lonely? DL: When the World Cup matches were on and nobody cared about football up there, I felt a bit lonely. But sometimes it's nice to be lonely. I have to say though that I felt fantastic to be alone and to be working on something so different. And to know that I could actually live in another country, and enjoy and do my work.
AC: You sound so mature. DL: I grew up a lot in those three months.
AC: Tell me something: Now when you go back to Mexico, you go back after doing Kevin Costner's film, and you have agents, publicists, and trainers. You're a big star! [laughs] DL: After you work outside Mexico, people here start to respect you more. In one respect you have to go outside the country and do important things, and then they care about you in Mexico. Of course, with Frida and everything, they've been treating me like, "Oh, Diego! You made it!"
AC: In Frida you play Salma [Hayek]'s--Frida's--young lover, right? DL: Yeah, her first boyfriend, Alejandro Gomez Arias.
AC: Did you have any sex scenes with Salma? DL: Yeah, I had one. Except the problem was that we shot it in just six takes.
AC: That's the thing with you: All the sex scenes, they are so quick. [Luna laughs] I remember in Y Tu Mama también we couldn't do things that were longer than 30 seconds, because for some reason you couldn't last. DL: [laughs] No, no. Don't confuse the movie with...
AC: -- Hey, there is a movie that proves it! DL: [laughs] With Salma, we had a long, long scene.
AC: You monster! Tiger! [both laugh] Have you seen Gael [Garcia Bernal, Luna's co-star in Y Tu Mama]? DL: No. He's in Chile now shooting a movie [The Motorcycle Diaries]. We phone each other whenever we can, but he is in the jungle without a cell phone so I haven't talked to him in two weeks. We are trying to build a theater company--if we have the time to have a lunch about it.
AC: Now, Diego, is it true that what we see in Y Tu Mama también is not your member? DL: It's true. You wanted me to have a very specific type of penis. I didn't want to cut my...
AC: You know, any serious actor would have been circumcised for the part. [Luna laughs] Would you circumcise for Kevin Costner? DL: How many zeros? [both laugh] No, I won't do that for anyone. I like my penis as it is.
AC: Well, I'm very happy for you and your penis. What is your next movie? DL: It's called Havana Nights. It's a love story. My character is a young Cuban guy living in Cuba in 1958, when Castro's going to take power. He falls in love with this girl who's American, and they like to dance. But because Castro is taking power, they have to leave the country. It's an impossible love.
AC: Is Castro in the movie? DL: He doesn't appear in the movie, but you hear a lot about him.
AC: Have you met him? DL: I saw him once, but I didn't...
AC: --Saw him for dinner? Or what? DL: [laughs] In Cuba, once. I met him, but he didn't say a word to me. But he had a long conversation with my father. He was trying to convince my father to stop smoking.
AC: If not, you go to prison, right? So do you think we have a shot for the Academy Awards? DL: Yeah, of course. Tu Mama is the most important movie I've ever done. I mean, you always want to do a good movie, but too many things have to happen to have that most of the time. And all those things happened in this one.
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