Aiming for the top in Hollywood
EIZA GONZÁLEZ IS A STAR IN MEXICO. HERE? WORKING ON IT.
ON E E V E N I N G in London, where she was shooting scenes for the 2019 “Fast & Furious” spinoff “Hobbs & Shaw,” Eiza González couldn’t sleep. The culprit: a middle-of-the-night reckoning with the prospects of her professional future. In the wee hours, an anxious González asked the universe and her mother, former model Glenda Reyna, “Is this the peak of my career?”
At the time, González was landing insubstantial parts in Hollywood despite the fame she’d achieved as a young star in Mexico. Though she was often seen in tent-pole productions, her screen time was scarce.
“I felt very self-conscious about my craft,” González, now 31, says by phone from her home in Los Angeles.
Always the pragmatic thinker, her mom — by her side since González’s turbulent adolescent stardom — put such crippling selfdoubt into a less fatalistic perspective. “The way she approaches life, directly and without sugarcoating, has been so helpful,” González says.
In the clarity of that nadir, González stepped back to acknowledge her expectations-defying trajectory. After all, her tenacity as a Latina in a cutthroat and uneven field merits huge commendation.
For the Mexico City native, with roots in the northern Mexican state of Sonora, music as an aspiration came before acting. Eight-year-old González dreamed of being a singer.
Her interests expanded drastically after the death of her father, Carlos González, when she was 12. Her mother, worried that the trauma would plunge her daughter into depression, enrolled her into extracurricular courses, including musical theater. It took one class for González to redirect her focus.
“Shortly after, I talked my mother into letting me drop out of school. I don’t know how I did that,” she recalls. “I convinced her that I was positive acting was what I wanted to do for a living.”
Her break came in the mid-2000s when she landed the lead in the teen soap about a rock star, à la “Hannah Montana.” The show, “Lola: Érase una vez.” was from producer Pedro Damián — the man behind the youth-oriented melodrama “Rebelde,” which spawned the stratospherically popular group RBD. ”
“Overnight, I was catapulted into the public eye,” says González. “It was as big as it could get for Latin America at the time. It was so intense. I was young and so not emotionally or mentally prepared for what that fame came with.”
Tabloids in her home country didn’t hold their sharp tongues when tracking, questioning and photographing her every move. González, then a fragile 15, took her first steps into womanhood under the judging gaze of millions while still mourning her father.
“I was psychologically and physically awkward,” she says. “You are not only trying to be a good role model, but you’re also defining who you are, who you want to be and making your own mistakes.”
Out of that rose a steady TV and music career. But González couldn’t fathom working in U.S. movies. There were few Latinas on-screen to point to as role models; Salma Hayek,
who had crossed over and had attained certain recognition, was seen as the sole outlier.
“I never saw Hollywood as a real possibility,” González says. It seemed more like a dream.”
In her early 20s, between projects in Mexico, she would visit Los Angeles, not to work but to replenish her motivation. “Maybe one day,” she would think.
“It was merely a coincidence,” González says of her transition to the United States, born out of her mother’s “let’s just try it out” attitude. “She was like, ‘What about this thing called IMDbPro?’ And I was like, ‘Mother, it doesn’t work like that. You need an agent.”
Months later, González got a call out of the blue from Mary Vernieu, Robert Rodriguez’s casting director. The Mexican American filmmaker had auditioned more than 50 actresses for the terrifying character of Santánico Pandemonium in “From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series,” a role Hayek originated in the 1996 film on which the TV show was based, but hadn’t found the right fit.
“There were big shoes to fill,” Rodriguez says via email.
Vernieu had read about González and suggested her. After seeing her photo, Rodriguez had her read. Her audition tape stunned him. “Eiza showed she had real authority as that character, and because of her musical background, she had fantastic stage presence,” he says. Even from that video shot against a white wall, he sensed her star power.
“What surprised me was how incredibly she performed through the monster makeup,” he says. “Once an actor is covered in full prosthetics, that can zap the performance out of anyone. But Eiza became superhuman.”
“I love Robert because he is a believer in people when there’s no hype,” González says of the director’s championing of talent such as Hayek, Rosa Salazar, Jessica Alba and Antonio Banderas. “He supports his community. Sometimes we just need a chance.”
Later, when British director Edgar Wright asked Rodriguez to recommend a Latina actress for “Baby Driver,” González was his suggestion. The action-packed love saga, in which she played the enchanting villainess Darling, was González’s international breakthrough.
What sold Wright on González was the confidence in her audition, both solo and in a chemistry read with Jon Hamm. She was the perfect femme fatale, able to handle the tonal cocktail of humorous charm and cold-blooded malicious intent.
“It can be daunting to share the screen with two Oscar-winning actors,” Wright says, “but she was never outwardly intimidated. I have never asked her whether she was nervous to do the scenes; I want to preserve the memory of ice-cool Eiza totally holding her own.”
“Baby Driver” wound up receiving three Academy Award nominations in 2018. As a result, González was asked to present at that year’s Oscars. She remembers attending with her mother and sitting next to Helen Mirren. “I’m still that little Mexican rascal that grew up in Coyoacán [in Mexico City]. Never in my wildest dreams was this a possibility,” she says. “I cried the day I found out I was going to present.”
AFTER THAT boost, opportunities for more layered supporting roles followed: Robert Zemeckis’ “Welcome to Marwen,” Alice Waddington’s dystopian indie “Paradise Hills” and a second collaboration with Rodriguez in “Alita: Battle Angel.” But even as her credits grew, getting cast didn’t get simpler.
“I always say to my agent, ‘We don’t audition for stuff. We fight for stuff.’ Besides my first show with Robert, I don’t think I’ve ever booked something easily,” she says.
“Moving to this country has been challenging, because there are so many things that are against you as an immigrant woman that have zero correlation to your talent. A lot of predisposed ideas are projected onto you. It’s fighting a lot of concepts versus just going into the room and knowing that you are going to be seen for you.”
During her early days in Hollywood, González used to think: “I should be thankful and not ask for more. This is good enough for me.” Often, she’d joke about being willing to play a tree in the background if it meant learning from a respected director. That’s changed.
“I’m learning that it’s OK to want to take up more space,” she says. “Women are taught not to take up space, but now I’m like, ‘I can be a leading lady. I have the talent. Let me show you that I am capable.’ It’s OK to be driven, and I shouldn’t feel like I’m asking too much.”
Now about the same age as Hayek was when she produced and starred in “Frida,” González is more than ever looking up to the Oscarnominated actress. Both stars began their U.S. path in the same role under the same director; now, González wishes to follow Hayek’s self-determinist example. She wants to be part of the creative space — to produce and, finally, be the leading lady.
“I have so much respect for Salma,” González says. “She did it in a time when there wasn’t a consciousness about these issues. I’m in the same stage, trying to make my own stuff, because I have realized that if I allow myself to be at the mercy of the industry, I will never achieve the things that I want to. I’ve also learned that it’s OK to want better things for myself.”
Part of that transition, more than just avoiding offers in stereotypical parts, means securing jobs that are not solely tied to her background and that don’t use her to fill a diversity quota. Her recent J Blakeson-directed film on Netflix, “I Care a Lot,” in which she stars opposite Rosamund Pike, illustrates that evolution. In the story about a duo that scams the elderly, González plays Fran, astute partner in life and crime to Pike’s unscrupulous Marla.
“I love directors who take chances like J Blake did with me on ‘I Care a Lot,’ ” she says. “That role didn’t have a specific ethnicity. He could have cast literally anyone and yet he went with a wild choice.”
“I immediately saw that she had a really wide range,” says Blakeson, who was familiar with González’s work in “Baby Driver.” “She could deliver the strength and capability of Fran but was also brilliant at the more emotional stuff. A mixture of fight and fragility that was perfect for the role.”
For González, constantly having to justify her value as an artist, as a woman who’s a Latina, is disheartening.
“We live in a society that inherently likes to minimize women. If a woman has desire for success, she is desperate, but if a man has desire for success, he is driven.” she says. “People have suggested my success has been tied to my romantic relationships or the people I’m friends with.”
Recently, while doing press for “Godzilla vs. Kong” with costar and fellow Mexican thespian Demián Bichir, she was moved to hear him speak out against insinuations that her commitment and skill aren’t the reasons she has soared so high.
To that, Bichir responds, “If you think she is just here because she is pretty or because of this or that, that’s not the case. It takes a lot of work. Do you know the amount of beautiful people there are and the amount of people who have talent? Millions. It takes so much more than just that.” Hearing that from someone like Bichir, who shares a similar journey into the American entertainment landscape, carried added significance for her.
González thinks of herself as two people. There’s the confident Eiza who walks into rooms and is all about the work. Who intensely preps for roles or tries to improve her English, which is already mostly unaccented (but with a unique cadence she likes), thanks to her father prodding her to learn languages. Then there’s the Eiza who wonders, “How am I here?”
“I am terrified when I go to set, because I’m still disposing myself of all these expectations from when I was 14, when I was expected to be perfect, to be the best singer and the best actress,” she says. “I’m still shedding that skin off of me.”
Now, while she still has high expectations for herself, she’s found a healthy balance that’s allowed her to maintain her passion for acting as she navigates the ebbs and flows of the business.
“Sometimes you nail it and sometimes you don’t. I’ve nailed some of my performances, and in some, I’ve been awful. That’s OK,” she says, “but at least I was taking risks. As soon as I normalized that failing is part of growth, it freed me as an actress. I started having more fun.”
Whenever González, who will next be heard voicing the character of Milagro Navarro in the animated feature “Spirit Untamed” and seen in Michael Bay’s “Ambulance” alongside Jake Gyllenhaal, feels dejected about not booking a desired project, like that night in London, she tries to think about the greater effect of every shot she takes, aiming higher each time.
“I have to do it in order for other people to grow up and feel like they are being seen. That’s where I grab my strength and move forward,” she says spiritedly.
Speaking about her collaborations with cinema’s titans, González often repeats, “They could have cast anybody.” But in the end, they selected her to enliven their scripts and portray their characters. The truth is, those parts weren’t meant for anybody but her.