Skarsgard Online Interview

 September 2004

Diego Luna

Since a randy road-trip movie sent his star soaring three years ago, he's racing full steam ahead into a sky's-the-limit future 

Though few can actually testify to its drawbacks, becoming a poster boy for anything--a movement, a cause, or in Diego Luna's case, the future of Mexican cinema--must be a total drag. But with his performance in Alfonso Cuaron's groundbreaking hit Y Tu Mama Tambien (2001), a poster boy Luna became. Ever the busy actor, Luna speaks here with friend and fellow maverick Stellan Skarsgard about growing up in theater, the state of global politics, and why no matter where acting takes him, he can always go home again.

STELLAN SKARSGARD: So, Diego, I've got to start with Y Tu Mama Tambien, which was one of the best films I've seen in the last couple of years. It's so full of life, and it seems like it was a very positive atmosphere to work in.

DIEGO LUNA: It was, I think, but only at the end. In the beginning it wasn't easy to work with your best friend [Gael Garcia Bernal] and pretend you're someone else.

SS: Had you worked with him before?

DL: Yeah, in the theater when we were really young. But he went to drama school in London and I was working in Mexico, so we didn't see each other for three years. Then suddenly we were playing these characters.

SS: You've known him since you were kids?

DL: Yeah, our parents are friends and they work together. When I was born they were all working on this John Ford play, 'Tis Pity She's a Whore. He was born when they were rehearsing the play, and I was born when they opened it.

SS: And your father was a set designer, right?

DL: Yeah, he still is, in fact. He's going to be one until he dies because he'll never stop working. SS: People don't do that in the theater. [Laughs] Exactly. And my mother [who died when Luna was 2] was a costume designer on that play.

SS: In Y Tu Mama Tambien, you play an upper-class guy and Bernal plays a sort of middle-class guy. Growing up, what class did you belong to?

DL: Definitely the middle class--the one that is disappearing. You know, you can't really live from theater in Mexico. I think my father is one of the only people that lives from theater, but he is also an architect; he pays the rent by building theaters.

SS: With your father in the theater, did you talk politics when you were a kid?

DL: A lot, and that's one thing that I really like about Mexico: You're exposed to all this poverty, and because you see it every day, you have a much more politicized view. We're more active in a way, I think, and in my house it was present all the time because theater is always about the chance to say what you want to say and to speak to people. My father and I did a play four years ago in Mexico called The Broken Jar, to honor my mother's death, and the play worked so well because it was about a very corrupt judge in a little town in Mexico who controlled the lives of everyone. It was funny to have an audience there watching that and be able to say, "Well, this play still works, so we haven't changed anything in the world."

SS: I must say that if you're living in a country like Sweden, where you don't see any poverty anywhere, you can become very politically naive and innocent But even in United States politics, the Bush administration has done one good thing: It has politicized Americans by blatantly ignoring human rights. The entire Western world has been more politicized by the Bush administration. How did you get involved in politics?

DL: I thank every day of my life for Y Tu Mama Tambien because it gave us the chance to say what we wanted to say. In movies you get to see reality: People from the north of the country get to see and experience the south of the country in two hours. If you can see that thousands of Iraqi people die on the streets and that they didn't have guns in their hands, then you have to get affected. I think it's starting to happen. The other day there was a huge demonstration in Mexico against violence, and people were just saying, "We don't care about parties. We don't care about the left or the right. We just care about laving a good place to live, being able to walk on the streets without a gun to protect ourselves."

SS: What do you think are the most important issues for the world today, and for Mexico?

DL: First of all, you have to start where you live. I think that's what Spain showed just a few months ago with its presidential elections, and if you go to Spain it's a different country today. I wish we could change things like that in Mexico, and I wish people in the States would really take control of what's going on outside of their country, you know? It scares me a lot that some people in the States won't read subtitles in movies, for example. A country that doesn't read subtitles scares me because I think you need curiosity to see what's going on in different countries and languages in order to celebrate differences.

SS: That's very important. Now, you grew up around the theater. Did that affect the way you thought about acting?

DL: Yeah. I don't know about other kids, but I loved to tell lies. I always told people that my family was a different family--not having a mother allows you to invent a new mother every month. And suddenly, I realized that my father was doing exactly the same in his life, you know? Just preparing huge lies for two or three months. And I always got so excited about the idea that I could pretend to be someone else and understand all the tricks behind the lie.

SS: You call them "lies," but are you sure that's the right word?

DL: When I say "lie," I mean I was always really surprised when actors finished a play and went to have dinner and suddenly the straight guy wasn't straight anymore, and the old woman wasn't old anymore. It all seemed to be a big lie.

SS: And everything seemed possible in a way because you could actually escape your life?

DL: Right. It's better than any therapy because you do things you don't allow yourself in real life. I think I fell in love first in the theater, and then in real life. I had, like, five or six girlfriends [in the theater] before my first real girlfriend.

SS: [laughs] Have you heard of something called the Hollywood Stock Exchange?

DL: No.

SS: Well, it's a fake stock exchange on the Internet where people can trade actors and films for certain prices. This week on the Hollywood Stock Exchange, your high was $33.78. That is pretty high: I'm $14. [Luna laughs] Then I found quotes from the Internet saying, like, "I love Diego Luna. He's extremely handsome, and I just worship him," and "He's so sexy. I want to go onto the movie screen and fuck his face off!" [Lima laughs] People say things like that about you. I don't know if it's boys or girls, but it doesn't matter.

DL: [laughs] No, it doesn't matter.

SS: But you could become an international idol. Does it scare you? Do you want that?

DL: I don't want it. I want to be able to do any movie I want in Mexico, and I want people to see the movies I do. But I don't think that being famous is the goal. When people stop me for my work, I feel really proud. I don't think that's a bad thing, and I like it when people on the street have something to say about my work. There are big stars, and there are actors; an actor can be famous too, but he's still an actor.

SS: What attracts you the most to a movie?

DL: Almost every time, it is the script.

SS: And with your new film Criminal, you have a good script. It's a remake of Nine Queens [2001], the Argentinean film.

DL: Yeah. And what's fantastic is that this movie celebrates all movies, in a way, because it's trying to honor the Argentinean film. Basically, Steven Soderbergh, George Clooney, and Gregory Jacobs went to see Nine Queens and said, "This is an amazing script! We have to do this." They were affected by what was going on in Argentina, and that started a whole project in the States--I think that's great. I thought it was a smart script, and it was a chance to work with John C. Reilly and Maggie Gyllenhaal, two actors I like a lot. They offered me that movie after Havana Nights, and Criminal was more like the kind of movies I want to do. I was so excited--it was like fresh air for me. It felt like a Mexican movie, where the money was going to be spent on things you're not going to see on the screen. It really was perfect for me and gave me confidence and love for my job back, because it was really tough to work on Havana Nights--it was such a different movie from everything I'd done before. Going back to something that was more common for me and that was in English was a relief. It was like, "Okay, there's a chance to do movies like this in the States."

SS: Yeah, that's very nice. So now you've gone back to Mexico to do Only God Knows.

DL: Yeah, now I'm rehearsing this great project about a Brazilian woman and a Mexican guy. It's a strong story, and I'm really, really happy.

SS: What do you want from life? You told me before that you want to find a woman.

DL: Definitely. I want to be in love and eat as much as I can!

SS: So it's love and food and sex, I guess.

DL: And music. And you know what else? To make projects happen in my country. That's something I care a lot about because I decided to be an actor here, and I wished there were more opportunities for actors.

SS: Ah, there's so much to do.

DL: Yeah, but I'm 24, which is nice.

Source: http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1285/is_8_34/ai_n6186305