from The Boston Herald / by Stephen Schaefer

Take the daughter of a famed director/one-time TV star, an up-and-coming actor, a Colombian discovery and an ex-child star parodying his image and you have four of the more fascinating faces in movies opening today. Here are the stars you’ll want to see on a big screen near you.

Catalina Sandino Moreno is living a bit of the Hollywood dream.

Moreno, now 23, was a 21-year-old college student in Bogota, Colombia, when a friend told her about an American who was looking for a Colombian girl to star in a movie called “Maria Full of Grace.”

Now Moreno can look to her shelf and admire the Best Actress Silver Berlin Bear she won at this year’s Berlin International Film Festival alongside Charlize Theron for “Monster.”

“I didn’t believe it,” she said. “The reporters made me realize it was big. Of course people say, ‘I knew it all the time!’ But my family are very amazed. Their little girl is on the big screen, and they’re so happy and proud. That’s what I need, for them to be proud. I don’t need anyone else to be more proud than them.”

Writer-director Joshua Marston set the wheels in motion for this latest Cinderella story when he decided to make his feature film debut by taking newspaper headlines about Colombia’s “mules,” cocaine and heroin smugglers who ingest the contraband, and present a story from a personal angle. To do this, the right actress had to be found to play Maria, a headstrong teenager who longs for a better life and decides her best option is to become a mule.

Marston had seen more than 800 candidates and was discouraged until Moreno, who had never acted professionally, arrived.

“I’d never had in the back of my mind, ‘Maybe I can be Maria, maybe they’ll pick me.’ I hate to expect something that in the end I’ll be disappointed,” she said.

Once she was cast, Moreno delved into the script, an unflinching look at the drug trade.

“The first thing Josh told me was he was trying to make a story about a Colombian girl - and he never said anything about drugs. He just gave me the script, and with my mother, we discussed the drug part. It’s so well-written and treated.”

Like many of those who are moved by the film, Moreno had little inkling what the reality was for these drug couriers.

“My familiarity was very superficial. You hear and see in the news or newspapers that there are people who do these jobs. You never know how desperate they are,” she said.

“You think it’s great the police caught them and they’re in jail. That’s the end. And, of course, you think those are bad people who do it. It’s a bad image for the country. And to risk their lives for a few dollars - is it worth it? I didn’t know until I made this how hard it is for them.”

Moreno, who now lives in the United States and speaks English fluently, has already acted off-Broadway and has an agent.

“I’m not rushing into another movie. I don’t want to go so fast I can’t focus. I’d prefer to act in Spanish. I’d be more comfortable, but if there’s a script in English I like, she added, sounding very much like the gutsy Maria, “I’ll fight for it.”