from Interview / by Lewis Beale

Flying from her native Bogota, Colombia, to New York’s JFK Airport about a year ago, Catalina Sandino Moreno was stopped by U.S. customs officers because as a single female traveling alone, she fit the profile of a drug smuggler, a mule. “I was very freaked out,” says the actress, who coincidentally had just finished filming her screen debut as a 17-year-old drug mule in the intensely realistic Maria Full of Grace, which hits theaters this month. “They put me in a little room, opened my bag, and searched my clothes. I kept telling them, ‘I’m just a normal girl.’”

Flash back several years prior and Moreno was just a normal girl studying theater when she beat out more than 800 actresses for the role in an open casting call. Applause for Maria–and its young star–hasn’t abated since it won the Dramatic Audience Award at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, and Moreno, for her part, tied with Monster’s Charlize Theron for Best Actress honors at the Berlin Film Festival. “It’s not the story of the narcotraficantes in Colombia or about the bad people with the guns,” explains Moreno. “It’s about a human being.”

Now living in Manhattan, Moreno is reading scripts and working on her English, though the 23-year-old isn’t fazed that her accent might create obstacles. “I’m proud to be Colombian,” she laughs. “I like my accent.”