As a youngster, actor Santiago Cabrera was constantly on the move. His dad was a diplomat and Cabrera figures he spent a third of his life in England, a third in his family’s native Chile and one-third just moving around.
By the time he was 10 he was already fluent in English when the family relocated to London. As he’d attended an American school in their last post in Romania, he spoke with an American accent. “But I was a shy 10-year-old in a new school and I went into ‘British’ in a matter of days just to blend in,” he says in a meeting room of a hotel here in Pasadena, California.
He’s been trying to blend in ever since. “Not necessarily did I ever feel like I fit in,” he says in a clipped British accent. “Even in Chile I’m a bit different because I’ve been living abroad and abroad is something different. I think that’s why there’s comfort in creating characters. You get to explore so many things that you know, aspects that you have, but maybe you don’t use them in real life.”
Cabrera has been plumbing those aspects for 16 years. He’s played the Austrian composer Mozart in Amadeus, the English aristocrat Sir Lancelot in Merlin, the New York artist who paints the future in Heroes, as well as a Cuban guerilla, a Mexican priest, a Hungarian war correspondent and now a dashing French cavalier in BBC America’s The Musketeers.
Cabrera remembers always being an observer. “I hung out with all the guys who got into trouble but I was very shy, so I just watched a lot. Then I would imitate, that’s one of the things I did. When we lived in London you’re fascinated by all the accents you hear and I went to Catholic school so my classmates were all Irish. So when I’d go to their house they’d have the Irish accent so I would imitate a lot.”
His parents would host dinner parties and his dad would wake him and encourage him to show off for the guests. “He’d say, ‘Do a Scottish accent.’ ‘Do an Irish accent.’ I’d go around the whole spectrum.”
Cabrera, 36, was also good at sports, another way of fitting in quickly, he says. In fact he played semi-pro soccer, but says he never considered it as a career. “I make parallels, especially in theatre, which is where I started: the dressing room, the getting dressed together, the teamwork, the rehearsal — all of that is very similar to being in a sport. So straightaway it was like something I’d been doing all my life.
“I do think for me acting is physical. I’ve always approached it from a physical perspective. I love the training. You can intellectualise and sit down, which helps a lot of the time, but at the end of the day you have to get on your feet and do it.”
When he was first starting out he snagged small parts on British television. “I remember one of my first shows was a video game, a motion-capture character and they told me how much they paid me — it was less than 1,000 pounds a day or something but I thought I was rich. ‘Really? For three days’ work? That kind of money?’
“Then you go out and see the real world and you’re grinding every day and you always question it, but when you can do it, it’s the greatest job in the world.”
While he was struggling he pursued a variety of jobs: a bar man, waiter, he even tried to become a professional party planner, but that didn’t fly. His most unique job was pulling a rickshaw.
“Rickshaw driving in London was odd because the clients are drunk people,” he says. “You go to the West End around 7 or 8pm and for the first couple of hours you see the tourists point and think about it, but then they go, ‘No, it’s fine.’ Then when everyone starts boozing, they’re on the rickshaw in two seconds. So it’s kind of funny to see it from the other side ... but it was good money, you can make pretty good money and you stay fit as well.”
Cabrera has been married for nine years to writer-director Anna Marcea. He says they make it a rule to never be apart longer than two weeks — a challenge since his career keeps him flying the friendly skies. “We work it out that whatever trip or whatever project I’m doing, we plan that she’ll either visit or I’ll visit after every two weeks,” he says. They lucked out on The Musketeers. It was filmed in Prague and Marcea accompanied him.
Cabrera plays Aramis, the suave lover of the trio, in The Musketeers. He was the only actor not in Britain when they were casting, so he sent an audition tape playing a sort of generic Musketeer.
“They approached me again and said, ‘We’re interested in you for Aramis.’ And that’s when it really came (to me). I loved it from the get-go but when I saw that character it really spoke to me. I saw a way in, and then it’s always a leap of faith because you can see the potential in it and hope it will go in that direction. And I think everything was better than you could’ve hoped for.” — MCT
I’m stronger: JLo after split
Jennifer Lopez is happy in her newfound singledom. The singer says she not just feels refreshed, but is confident about her career too. The 44 year-old songstress recently split from her boyfriend Casper Smart after two and a half years of dating, but she seems to be coping up well.
With this most recent separation, Lopez admitted to discovering her confidence once again, reports contactmusic.com. The revelation came when the star featured cover of Billboard magazine’s July 2014 issue. “I don’t feel like I have anything to prove anymore ...Things have changed so much for me,” she told the magazine.
“I had to really do some soul searching and just realise a lot of things about love, and now I feel like I come from a place where I’m stronger and, I think, better,” she added. Smart and Lopez, who began dating him shortly after she split from ex-husband Marc Anthony, are still on amicable terms but they decided to call it quits after simply growing apart. — IANS
Flockhart visits hubby Harrison Ford in hospital
Actor Harrison Ford’s wife Calista Flockhart has rushed to Britain to be with her husband, who was injured while filming the upcoming Star Wars film. The 71-year-old actor is reported to have broken his ankle, although it now seems that the accident could have been more serious than initially suspected. The Ally McBeal star confirmed that she was going to see her husband, who has now been in hospital for several days following the incident, reports contactmusic.com.
Recently, Ford was flown from Pinewood Studios in Buckinghamshire, where Star Wars Episode VII is being filmed, to the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford. Apparently, a door from the Millennium Falcon spacecraft collapsed and fell on top of him. Ford is currently reprising his role as space smuggler Han Solo in the Star Wars franchise. He had starred in the original trilogy, first released in 1977, and is appearing in the new film alongside fellow original cast members Carrie Fisher and Mark Hamill. — IANS
Nothing wrong with Botox: Kate Hudson
Actress Kate Hudson has shared her opinion on anti-ageing and admits she wouldn’t say no to Botox. The 35-year-old thinks it’s “great” that age-defying cosmetic injections are widely available to women and she can see herself resorting to the treatment to improve her complexion in the future, reports contactmusic.com.
Asked whether she’d ever have Botox, she exclaimed: “Why not? Right now, it’s not something I feel I need but I think it’s great that it’s available. The other day, my friend called me and said, ‘I’m going to get a little Boty’. So I think there’s nothing wrong with a little Boty call if you feel you want it.”
Hudson, who raises her sons, Bingham, two, and 10-year-old Ryder with her fiancé, Muse singer Matthew Bellamy, has always had a passion for fashion and says putting together a great outfit helps boost her confidence.
She said: “I’ve loved it since I was a little girl. My mom says that when I was small, I would put together outfits that made her go, ‘Okay, I don’t know what you are wearing, but I’ll go with it’.” — IANS