Rodrigo Santoro

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Rodrigo Santoro at Comic-Con in San Diego 2017

Rodrigo Junqueira dos Reis Santoro (born August 22, 1975 in Petrópolis , Rio de Janeiro ) is a Brazilian actor . Since the early 1990s, he has appeared in over 40 film and television roles. He became known to a wide audience through his leading role in the Brazilian film Behind the Sun (2001) and appearances in international cinema and television, including Actually… Love (2003), 300 (2006) and the series Lost (2006–2007). In 2004 he also worked with Australian actress Nicole Kidman in a TV commercial for the perfume Chanel Nº 5 .

biography

Childhood and first film roles

Rodrigo Santoro was born in Petrópolis in 1975 as the son of the Italian engineer Francesco Santoro and the Brazilian painter and sculptor Maria José. He grew up with a sister in his hometown, where he attended the Colégio Aplicação. Santoro later moved to nearby Rio de Janeiro to study marketing at the Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro (PUC) . During his studies he found access to the street theater scene in Rio and made his acting debut in 1993 with a small part in the Brazilian soap opera Olho no Olho .

In the years that followed, Santoro, who had been fascinated by acting since childhood, was given other roles in Brazilian soap operas and in 1996 played the leading male role in the television series O Amor Está no Ar . Encouraged by this initial success, he dropped out of university in order to concentrate fully on a serious career as an actor. In the same year a role in Dirceu Lustosa's short film Depois do Escuro followed , but it would be another five years before Santoro was awarded his first leading role in a feature film production. In Laís Bodanzkys directorial debut Bicho de Sete Cabeças mimes of the young Brazilian Neto, who because of a marijuana - Joints is trained by his father in a mental institution. There the actually healthy, rebellious teenager is plunged into deep depression by the abstruse and inhumane healing methods. Although the film drama was not granted commercial success in Brazil, Bicho de Sete Cabeças gained the favor of local film critics. Lead actor Rodrigo Santoro won the Acting Awards for his second feature film, after the family comedy O Trapalhão ea Luz Azul (1999), at the film festivals of Brasília , Cartagena and Recife and was awarded by the Art Critics Association of São Paulo and the Grande Prêmio BR do Cinema Brasileiro , the Brazilian Cinema Grand Prix, celebrated as best actor. Internationally, the film was represented under the English distribution title Brainstorm in the competition at the Locarno and Stockholm film festivals .

Success with “Behind the Sun” and first international role offers

After his breakthrough with Bicho de Sete Cabeças , Rodrigo Santoro became known to an international audience in the same year through the lead role in Walter Salle's historical drama Behind the Sun (2001). In the film adaptation of a novel by the Albanian Ismail Kadare , the actor, described outside of the film set as shy and reserved, mimes the young and sensitive Tonho who, at his father's insistence, is to avenge the death of his eldest brother. The production, praised by film-dienst as a visually stunning drama, received mixed reviews due to the controversial portrayal of the blood atonement topic, which is still current in Brazil, and won a Golden Globe nomination for best foreign language film in 2002 . After further appearances in television series, including the multi-part Pastores da Noite (2002) with Fernanda Montenegro , another critical success followed in 2003, with which Santoro was able to fight the stereotype of the Latin lover. In Héctor Babenco's prison film Carandiru , he mimes the part of the transsexual prison inmate who, together with his dwarfish fiance (played by Gero Camilo), is anxiously waiting for the result of his HIV test. For the undervalued and credible role of Lady Di, which caused numerous moviegoers in Brazil to leave the cinema in advance, Santoro received another nomination for the Grand Prix of Brazilian Cinema.

Santoro in 2003

In the same year, Hollywood became aware of the actor through his play in Bicho de Sete Cabeças and cast Santoro in the English-language television film The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone , in which he acted alongside such established colleagues as Anne Bancroft and Helen Mirren . Santoro made his debut in English-language cinema shortly afterwards with supporting roles in McG's action film 3 Charlie's Angels - Full Power and Richard Curtis ' romantic Christmas comedy Actually ... Love (both 2003), in which he is the object of desire for Cameron Diaz and Laura Linney, respectively embodied. In 2004 the Brazilian was seen promoting the perfume Chanel Nº 5 alongside Oscar winner Nicole Kidman . The two-minute, multi-million dollar television commercial was created by Australian film director Baz Luhrmann in the style of his hit film Moulin Rouge! (2001) staged. In May of the same year Santoro was awarded the Trophée Chopard for Carandiru at the Cannes Film Festival , which recognizes the achievements of young international actors.

Major roles in English language film and television

Despite the first successes in international cinema, Rodrigo Santoro remains loyal to his homeland, where he took on one of the leading roles in the romantic comedy A Dona da História in 2004 . The Brazilian became known to a broad US audience at the end of 2006 through his participation in the successful US television series Lost . Together with the two Americans Elizabeth Mitchell and Kiele Sanchez , he joined the rest of the acting ensemble around Matthew Fox , Evangeline Lilly and Josh Holloway from the third season . From 2006 to 2007 Santoro worked on six other film projects, including Zack Snyder's comic book adaptation 300 described as "historically perfect, but politically naive" , in which he can be seen as the Persian great king Xerxes . For the role of the three-meter-tall despot, draped with gold piercings, rings and chains, Santoro had to gain muscle mass, shave his head and body while filming and sit in the mask for up to five hours. The reward was a 2007 nomination for "Best Villain" for the MTV Movie Award , which went to Jack Nicholson ( Departed ).

Santoro with the Actor Award of the Festival de Brasília do Cinema Brasileiro for Meu País (2011)

In the same year Santoro, who was counted among the busiest South American actors in the USA, lost the leading role in Alfonso Arau's musical adaptation of Dare to Love Me to the Italian Raoul Bova . In the $ 15 million production, Santoro was supposed to play the famous tango singer and composer Carlos Gardel (1890-1935) alongside the Spaniard Paz Vega and the Colombian pop singer Shakira . A year later he took on supporting roles in Pablo Trapero's Spanish-language prison film Leonera and Steven Soderbergh's two-part Che Guevara biography Revolución and Guerrilla (2008), in which he slipped into the role of Raúl Castro alongside Benicio del Toro . In 2009 he was seen as the lover of Jim Carrey in the tragic comedy I Love You Phillip Morris . In 2011 he successfully returned to Brazilian cinema. In José Henrique Fonseca's biography Heleno , he portrayed the well-known Brazilian soccer player Heleno de Freitas (1920–1959), which earned him the actor's award at the Havana Film Festival . In the same year followed a role in Andre Ristum's family drama Meu País , for which Santoro was awarded the Actor Award of the Festival de Brasília do Cinema Brasileiro for the second time after Brainstorm . In 2012 he starred alongside Nicole Kidman and Clive Owen in Philip Kaufman's television film Hemingway & Gellhorn . After further film roles in various Hollywood productions, he has been in the Westworld series since 2016 .

In 2017 he was accepted into the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), which awards the Oscars every year.

Private life

Apart from the film and television camera, the actor drew attention to himself as the Brazilian dubbing voice of Stuart Little in the animated films of the same name, Stuart Little (1999) and Stuart Little 2 (2002). In addition, the 1.90 m tall and 81 kg heavy Santoro, who appeared in Brazil as the title character in the play D'Artagnan and the Three Musketeers , was voted one of the 50 most beautiful people in the world by the American magazine People in 2004. Two years later, the magazine voted him twelfth on the Sexiest Man Alive .

Rodrigo Santoro lives in Rio de Janeiro, where he devotes his free time to surfing and yoga .

Filmography (selection)

Santoro at the premiere of What to Expect When You're Expecting (2012)

Awards

Web links

Commons : Rodrigo Santoro  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Film review by Josef Lederle in film-dienst 8/2002.
  2. ↑ Stephen Holden: Film Review. In: New York Times, May 14, 2004.
  3. ^ Eve MacSweeney: A place in the sun: Brazilian heartthrob Rodrigo Santoro brings his smoldering sensibility to America. In: Vogue 194 (2004), No. 9, September, p. 580.
  4. ↑ Hanns-Georg Rodek: No pain, no mercy. In: Die Welt , April 4, 2007, edition 80/2007, features section, p. 27.
  5. ↑ Rodrigo Santoro: From the beauty of ignorance  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. at yahoo.de (accessed September 30, 2007).@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / de.lifestyle.yahoo.com  
  6. ^ Anna Marie de la Fuente: Next Tango in Paris. In: Dailey Variety, November 3, 2006, News, p. 12.
  7. ↑ "Class of 2017". Accessed June 30, 2017. http://www.app.oscars.org/class2017/ .
  8. ↑ Cindy Pearlman: Santoro finds 'Lost': Hunky Brazilian is on his way to fame in America. In: Chicago Sun-Times , March 11, 2007, FLUFF, Cindy Pearlman's Big Picture, p. 12.
personal data
SURNAME Santoro, Rodrigo
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Santoro, Rodrigo Junqueira dos Reis (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Brazilian actor
DATE OF BIRTH 22nd August 1975
PLACE OF BIRTH Petrópolis , Rio de Janeiro, Brazil