Eres Magazine
16 November 2002

Diego Luna and Natalia Lafourcade ~ He has everything, except love. She looks for problems. Two attitudes, the same goal.

Diego is ‘well pleased’, that much is clear. Natalia is shy and excessively curious. He has a good time filming in diverse countries. She wants to know every attractive idea. Come to two worlds where the superficial simply has no capacity.

Diego Luna
He came to the photo session alone and half asleep, nearly silent. He was late to wake up and anyone might have easily thought: “I immediately believed it.” But no. Like the hours spent, his sleep disappeared and he became one more of the group; super-affectionate and talkative with Natalia, very entertaining and enthusiastic with everyone. Laid back. Zero attitude. He would stay the necessary time. He would repeat the [photo] shots repeatedly. He would put on the given clothes and never look at the clock. Now he is one of the most looked at and quoted Mexican actors of the moment. He knows everything that happens and enjoys it. He can be in a mammoth American production like in a low budge Mexican film. Choosing has its advantages and Diego is giving himself the pleasure.

His New Mexican Movie
Diego: “It is called Cigarettes, Indifferences and 20 Diamonds. [The name was changed to Nicotina after this interview.] It is a co-production. I believe that there are more producers than actors, but it is the only way of doing cinema today in this country [Mexico]. Nobody takes risks to produce alone. Hugo Rodríguez directs it and the script is good because everything happens in real-time, during an hour and 50 minutes in Mexico City. My character is a hacker, very cool with the computer, but an idiot for human relationships. He is in love with his neighbor, a Spanish cellist and he contracts the syndrome of the ‘best friend’, you know… He tries to get close like he is, but he becomes only her friend who can’t tell her what he feels. The movie is very cool. It does not look like anything I have done before. The movie shows common characters in extreme situations and that turns it into an ingenious comedy of dark humor.”

Question: How is your life today between so many trips and work?
Diego: “I am spending it well. I was in Canada to film Open Range, a western in English directed and performed by Kevin Costner. It was an entire experience to act in another language and in an industry that works. With what they make one movie, in Mexico we do three years of cinema. On the other hand, I am very glad to return and do a small project [Nicotina], where you can be a part of the decisions. At the end, I go to New York to do a few photos, to Miami for an event, and to London for the [screen] tests of the next movie that will be called Havana Nights. The project is something like the second part of Dirty Dancing. It is a love story between two young people and takes place in Cuba at the end of the 50’s, but it is a commercial film to everything it gives.”

Q: Perhaps will we see you dancing like Patrick Swayze?
Diego: “Yes, that is very well [laughs]. My friends already call me Chayanne and they make fun [laughs]. Since they found out, they bring me down. But I have two months to prepare myself and the music is going to be good. It has nothing in common with the cinema that I have done up to now. It will be very commercial, although it does not have to be useless and affable. It can be a good film and I hope it to be like that.”

To dream does not cost so much
Q: Are you justifying yourself from now on?
Diego: “Somehow, yes [laughs]. The fact is that they bother me very much because I went away to film with Kevin Costner. That I sold out. And yes, I sold out. But I have always done it. That should not surprise them now. It is very simple. This year in Mexico they did three movies, nothing more. We cannot say that cinema is made here, nor that it is an industry that one can live from because the information is pathetic and sad. As an actor it is cool to record something that is seen throughout the whole world and to know that I can bounce from one kind of cinema to another. The important thing is that the script is good, that there are people that you admire, and that they all want to tell the same story. And if that happens with a movie of many millions or a little, it makes no difference. To make a good one, two things are needed: conviction and the desire to tell that story. And in Canada we had it. Kevin assembled the project, directed, and acted in addition to Robert Duvall and Annette Bening. So however much they bother me in Mexico, I was not going to leave it. Here actors lose a lot of time hoping that they call us. And if you are going to live here you must produce your own projects. Theater work is the best example [The Complete Works of William Shakespeare in which Diego is producer and actor.] Now I can shuffle different options, decide what I want to do, and read many scripts.”

Q: You thought that some time it was going to happen?
Diego: “I was dreaming about it, but I did not believe that it would be so soon. Y tu mamá también was the detonator of what I am living. Over a period of two years I could start choosing. I did Frida that is released on November 20; Dark Cities; the western in Canada, though in my life I imagined myself with a sombrero and a horse talking about cows and grazing. I returned to Mexico to play a hacker in the Naples colony and soon I will be a Cuban of the 50s. The worst thing that might happen is that I make myself comfortable, repeat myself and not take risks. I feel good about my work that you see on other sides and that they are interested in me. I am of the age to do it and prefer to know people and places working, than from vacation. The guides do not come with the annoying things of countries.”

Q: How prepared were your for the flood that was to come to you after Y tu mamá también?
Diego: “I had to make adjustments, but it depends on the ability you have to get down on the floor and understand that you are nobody. The important thing is to be focused on what you want. I want to be an actor, to tell stories, to make movies and take risks. If you have that clear, you feel less dizzy. But yes I have needed certain adjustments and there is where friends help you very much. They throw a glass of water at you and tell you: ‘Wake up dude, you’re not so good.’ My dad always does it. I did 18 movies, from my friends thirteen were a flat failure. I have fallen down often, and that is of use. All this is what has me here today.”

Q: Who are these people that throw a glass of water on you?
Diego: “They are few. Whenever I see AlfonsO Cuaron he wakes me up and “el Gael [the way he calls him] too…

Q: With Gael you must do it mutually, because life changed for him in these years, so much like to you.
Diego: “Yes, we bring to ourselves down all the time. But it’s cool because each one takes his own way, even though we call to bother each other. He chatters to me telling me I went to Canada to carry golf clubs for Kevin Costner, and I annoy him with the film that he is doing now. Friends are the most important thing and what is most strange when I am far away.”

Bad Thoughts
Diego: “In Mexico we do not stand up for one or the other. The success of others gives great courage and must not be like that, it must be a pleasure for us. In interviews and press conferences they always raise a question that bothers me very much: if there is rivalry and jealousy with Gael. Get rid of that stupid mentality already. I am delighted that it goes well for Gael and that Kuno Becker films abroad. The success of others cannot give me anger and we are blocked from that.”

Q: Your dad is a theatrical designer and from boyhood you were living in the theater. Is that how your vocation came about?
Diego: “I believe so, yes. My mom died when I was two, so I spent it with my dad. I don’t know how it was, but one day I was acting. I shared many moments with him and it is the maximum thing. He always began with: ‘Oh, my son, you were phenomenal,’ but later, because of doubts, he brought me down to Earth. We are great fans of one another. I love him and admire him a lot. He is the only one that saw me in novelas [soaps], because even I wasn’t doing it, so he loves me very much. [laughs].”

Q: Do you have memories of your mom?
Diego: “Not at all. Sometimes I believe that I remember her, but when I open the album I realize that the image that I recreate is only a photo to which I put movement and sound to.”

Q: How much did this loss affect you in your life?
Diego: “You never overcome a death. You learn to live with the malice, even though life is a road in which you go divesting in people, stages, moments. It is something very difficult to understand, a small hole that is made in your heart and it hurts a lot, but is never covered. My friends say for that reason I look for a mother in every girlfriend.”

Q: And is that true?
Diego: “The worst thing is that it is very true.”

Q: Do you like older women or… ?
Diego: [He interrupts] “I like them all. Or better said, almost all. But I have always been with older women, it has been a constant. I also like girls my own age, but it happens this way. I have neither prejudices nor an ideal couple, because you live it disappointed.”

Q: It is the time to travel and be employed everywhere but you also live your life affectively with this freedom?
Diego: “I was with a girlfriend for two and a half years, but now it is very complicated to make a nucleus, to think about staying in one place and furnishing a house. Today I want to have the freedom to pack a suitcase and go away three months to film. Although I think that there is no better condition than to be in love and I will be looking. Clearly that is difficult to find if you don’t stay more than two months in one place.”

Q: Do you feel that you are in a moment of absolute freedom because you have neither anything nor anyone who you are tied to?
Diego: “I don’t believe so. The damned schedule is clogged [laughs]. Although yes, it is as you say. I have tried to avoid that something forces me to stay in one place. My base will always be Mexico, because my friends are here. It is where they make the food that I like and I miss it a little. This freedom also makes me feel the calmness that I am not wearing a tie from someone, as I don’t believe that the satellite life of a couple makes a good relationship. Fortunately what I do makes me very satisfied and I enjoy it quite a lot. Each time I have had to make fewer concessions and they will be three or four things that give me weariness. But I do not feel that I am losing or sacrificing my personal life for work. This entertains me. I assure you that traveling around the world to promote with the Gael and Alfonso was not any effort…”

Q: To travel so light of luggage does not make you feel alone or foreign sometimes?
Diego: “Well yes, there are nights in which nostalgia seizes me. In the World Cup, during the Mexico - Ecuador match, I needed to shout with someone. Yes my fits come to me, now I am in Mexico and since I film at night I cannot go to the Colmillo to with my friends. It is horrible to be here and not be able to do it either. There are days in which I have desires of not being me for a little while. The sadness always appears, but the trick is not to see what you lack, but to learn to live with that. It also has its delight to lead the MTV Awards and they take you in a limousine, whereas the day they come to pick you up in a sedan you do not get angry. To get in to the limo, they open champagne for you, to meet the beauties and to arrive to your hotel room…”

Q: Are they waiting for you?
Diego: “It would be very outstanding, but it does not happen to me [laughs]. I wish it was like that. That happens to rock stars, not to us no. But the important thing is not to believe it. It was good to have returned to Mexico to film a movie that is made with little money. You change in the street if there is no camper. You do not have five plates to choose from because we all eat the same thing and the days last fourteen hours. It is cool to know that it is always necessary to do these types of movies.”