from The Birmingham Post / by Mike Davies

Mike Davies says Grace with Catalina Sandino Moreno

Although the reality was that she was never going to win the Best Actress Oscar for her title role in Maria Full of Grace, Catalina Sandino Moreno can be deservedly proud to have been an unexpected wild card nominee at this year’s Academy Awards.

Not only does she enter the rarefied lists of those who have been nominated for their first feature film appearance but the 24 year old actress also made history by becoming the first Colombian to ever receive an Academy nomination.

Born in Bogot, in 1981, Catalina became interested in acting at an early age. In 1997, while still in high school, she enrolled in the city’s Ruben Di Pietro theatre academy before going on to study advertising at Bogot University, keeping up acting classes as a sideline and appearing in various amateur productions, including The Dark Room by Tennessee Williams.

Two years ago, already juggling twin fledgling careers in advertising and her mother urged her to audition for her first professional acting role, that of a pregnant drugs mule who, at great risk to her own life, smuggles a cache of cocaine-packed pellets into the United States in her stomach.

A middle class young woman from a well to do family, her father a cattle breeder, mom a pathologist, Moreno’s own experiences are a world away from that of Maria so, having won the role, the first thing she wanted to do was to find out where her character was coming from.

“I wanted to understand her family background, why she’s so tired,” she explains.

“I resisted talking to mules because Maria does not have anything to do with drugs herself - and me neither - and I wanted to be pure to that character. My job was to be truthful. So I went to live and work in a flower plantation in a little Colombian town for two weeks. Nobody knew why I was there.”

Starting work at seven in the morning, Moreno quickly got an insight into Maria’s frustrations.

“I didn’t dethorn the roses as they do in the movie, I just cut them, but it was still awful. Those jobs are pretty hard, working with the roses for hours and hours. And you don’t stop, you just keep on doing it. So I could understand why she was so tired and bored and depressed.”

Moreno was actually fired beforeher fortnight was up, the plantation owners apparently not taking kindly to her constant questioning of her fellow workers about their poor conditions and pathetic wages. But if working with flowers was a case of waking up and smelling the Colombian coffee, the whole process of drug smuggling was even more of a revelation.

While most Colombians are aware of drug mules, Moreno says that, like her, very few have any idea of what it actually entails or about the mules themselves.

“I grew up knowing about mules, but I didn’t even care,” she admits.

“I hated politics. I didn’t want to talk about it. Nobody likes to talk about it. And of course we have a lot of other problems, If we see someone on TV being caught smuggling in America, the first thought is that they are awful people, ruining their lives and putting another problem into the world, making more addicts.

“Or we will say it’s the parents’ fault, that they did not do their job well because the girl is in jail. But that’s a very cruel statement. We don’t stop to think that maybe the girl was smuggling drugs to America to make money for her parents to buy a house. When we screened the film in Bogot we realised no-one knew about the actual process of muleing, or even thought of these mules as real people. It was an eye-opener. And for me too.

“When I started the film. I lived in this bubble because my family and friends are fine and I don’t need anything. But when I started my research and discovered the extent to which this was happening in my country - and that it could happen next door and that there stories about out of work Colombian actors who were caught going to the US as mules - I was really shocked.”

Ironically, Moreno was to also experience first hand the same terrifying ordeal so many Marias go through trying to enter America.

“It was horrible. I had been back to Colombia to change my visa, and was returning to New York to finish the movie. I was relaxed and I took my bags and immediately someone came over and opened my bag. There were three people there and it was so intimidating that I got really nervous.

“I knew what the process was: that if they see you are nervous they will ask for an x-ray or something. So I was telling myself to just be calm, but my heart was pumping and my palms were sweating. And it was so horrible.

“And then they asked for my wallet. And I’m thinking, ‘Why don’t you just look at my visa? I’m not a terrorist, I’m not a mule, I’m just a student coming to New York to work with these people’. But they didn’t buy what I was telling them about the movie. They thought it was just a story. I was there for three hours.”

In the wake of the Oscars, a rather more recognisable Moreno should find entering America a little easier. Indeed, having had a childhood dream of going to New York to act on Broadway, she used the money from Maria to move to Manhattan, taking an apartment on 42nd Street and paying for a year’s acting classes at the Lee Strasburg Institute.

As yet Hollywood’s not come knocking at her door and, when she’s not touring the film festival circuit picking up awards, her work since wrapping Maria has included anunglamorous stint as a theatre usher and, when the original actress fell ill, the role of Blanche in an offoff Broadway production of Shakespeare’s King John that few people went to see.

A combination of her stunning, natural and deeply felt performance and its deserved Academy nomination should soon ensure she’ll not be having to show disgruntled patrons to their seats for the foreseeable future. But even if it all stopped tomorrow, Moreno has already made her mark in the movie historybooks. The moment is indelibly etched in her memory.

“I was at home on the Upper East Side watching the nominations being announced on television and giving my mum in Colombia a running commentary by phone. I just couldn’t believe it when they said my name and I saw my face on TV. I went silent. But my mum could just tell and started screaming. I’m the first Colombian to be nominated and my family is so proud.

Maria Full of Grace opens Friday