Catalina Sandino Moreno

Biography

In the spring of 2004 in New York, auditions were held for the lead in a low-budget film about a Colombian girl who works on a flower plantation and then becomes a drug mule. There were several hundred candidates, between 800 and 900 according to different accounts. Catalina Sandino Moreno was chosen, and it was her first work in film.

She was born on 19 April 1981 in Bogotá. Her father is a veterinarian and her mother a pathologist. She attended Saint George’s School in Bogotá, which teaches in English, and graduated in 2000; she then studied advertising and trained at Rubén Di Pietro’s acting academy. Her move to New York is dated to 2004 by some accounts and to 2005 by others; there, reportedly, she studied dramatic arts.

“Maria Full of Grace” brought her the Silver Bear for Best Actress at the Berlin International Film Festival, an award shared that year with Charlize Theron for “Monster”, and an Independent Spirit Award. On 26 January 2005 she was named among the Academy Award nominees for Best Actress. She was the first Colombian to be nominated and one of three Latin American actresses on that list. Since 2005 she has been a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

After the nomination, good scripts did not come. In an interview with OK! magazine she said that an Oscar does not guarantee better scripts, and for two or three years she looked for a role she liked. In V magazine she explained her choosiness as a matter of responsibility: as an actress and a Colombian immigrant she wanted to show reality, so that people would learn what is happening in the world.

In 2006 came “Paris, je t’aime”, in which she played Ana, a young immigrant mother, in Walter Salles’s segment “Loin du 16e”, and “Fast Food Nation”, in which she played Silvia, a Mexican immigrant. In 2007 she appeared in “Love in the Time of Cholera”, based on the novel by Gabriel García Márquez, as Hildebranda Sánchez. In 2008 she was in Steven Soderbergh’s two-part “Che”, playing Aleida March, the second wife of Ernesto “Che” Guevara. She attended the film’s premiere at Cannes. In 2010 she played the vampire Maria in “The Twilight Saga: Eclipse”.

In “Medeas” her character does not speak a word.

Films from several countries followed. Of “Medeas” she said that it is a challenge for an actor: you have to act and feel without any lines. The film was shown in Venice, where she was the only representative of Colombia. In 2012 in Chile she worked with Sebastián Silva on “Magic Magic”, alongside Michael Cera, Emily Browning and Juno Temple (released in 2013). “Roa” came out in 2013 and “A Most Violent Year” in 2014.

On television she appeared in “The Bridge” (from 2013), in the fifth season of “Falling Skies” (as Isabella), in “American Gothic” (2016) and in “The Affair”. In the series “From” she has played Tabitha Matthews, one of the leading roles, since 2022. In the same period she was announced for “Ballerina”, a spin-off of the John Wick films, where she plays Lena Macarro; in 2023 she appeared in John Woo’s action thriller “Silent Night” (as Saya Godluck). The film “Custody” was shown at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2016.