Ana de la Reguera, with Hollywood at her feet!

For me, success means living [how I like] and doing what I like, it is finally my reality and I feel very lucky. But if there is a secret that has worked for me, it would be foolishness, the act of never taking my hands off of the reins, of understanding that this career is a journey more than anything. Sure there are more talented and more beautiful people out there with better ideas, but this career is a long-distance race and I have the personality to endure what is needed to stay afloat. So yes, foolishness may just be one of the things that got me to where I am now.

No! I think it is dangerous to think about that. Nacho Libre was filmed mainly in Mexico, it was my first film and I think I was too young to understand the scope of it. The most difficult thing is to be in this moment, to sustain a trajectory. It was about 4 or 5 years after [Nacho Libre], I was working on a series, and in one scene the entire set was working with me on my close up. That’s when it hit me... I have a film crew in this country waiting on me? When did I get here? It was a bizarre moment. Me from Veracruz, from a small town, realizing I was working in that situation was incredible. But I didn‘t think ‘I made it’, I thought, ‘Do they know I come from a small town?

Very much! I hope I am still like her. I‘m still the same, a poor student, still bad at the thousands of things that I don’t like, but the things I am passionate about… I give the best of myself! I am a joker, jarocha, you can’t take the Veracruz out of the girl. I have lived in L.A. for 16 years, almost as long as I lived in Veracruz and longer than I lived in Mexico City. There are still times that I feel unaccustomed to where I am, but in the last year I feel more than ever that I belong here. I am feeling more like a fish in water.

I don‘t know,” she laughed, “I have already kissed someone, and more so I feel pretty satisfied. At some point maybe I would love to live in Europe, take a sabbatical year...the classic fantasy of everyone who dreams of learning French, Italian, eating pasta, gaining weight, writing...Maybe that is a fantasy I have yet to fulfill.

Very good, very calm, I have been single during the pandemic. It was already difficult to meet people, with the pandemic it has been terrible. But love always comes to me in the most unexpected ways, I am not used to looking for it, it always appears suddenly...so I like it that way. Right now I am calm, a little more than normal, because of the quarantine and work, but still happy.

The truth is that love is the best. I believe that love is what we are all looking for. When I was a child, I was bored if I didn‘t have a crush on someone. I always thought, ‘I want someone to love!’ Life without love is very boring, not having someone to think about, someone to fantasize about. I am a lover and a romantic… I love love!

No, on the contrary,“ she says emphatically. “Love is amazing.

I think you can. It is difficult to find balance, because my career seasonally requires spending time in different locations. For now I am here, but for example, in August I will go to Mexico for three or four months and I will not get to visit home. Sometimes that is what complicates your personal life, but since I love what I do, I think that when the right person arrives I will be able to make it work, at least, to make time to be with that person. Regarding true love that lasts forever, I see it as a bit unrealistic in this lifetime. I mean, how amazing if it happens, it would be incredible, but if it does not happen, that is OK too.

Depending on what it is ... If it‘s something creative, maybe my sister. If it is personal or about love, then my best friends. If it is a question about family, my parents.

What my mother did really well is make me and my sister into grateful people, and she also taught not to care about the he-said-she-said. Do things the way you want, no matter what others say.

He has always been a person who showed us respect without imposing on us. He very much respects everyone for their way of being and thinking, he set an example of how to be happy without butting into the lives of others. More so than advice from my parents, what influenced me most deeply was seeing the example set by how they have lived their life.

I don‘t know if it’s a fear of getting old, but fear of feeling that time is slipping away... I want to do many more things! This moment is so bountiful and so beautiful, more than anything what I want is time. The more years that go by, the faster they fly... It is a feeling of being rushed. Sometimes you have to learn to enjoy life and each moment, but yes, more than anything, it is that, longing for more time, it all passes by so fast.

It is very complicated and something you have to learn to live with every day and part of the journey of this career, it’s a marathon. We all get rejected at some point, by a friend, by a partner, at work, by a member of your family, we all come across this in life. My advice would be that you always have to keep working on yourself first, love yourself, even be a bit arrogant in that sense, love yourself more, know what you want and what you need. Then you can balance it out a bit, be grateful for what you have, but it is difficult.”

“Having a plan B is both necessary and helpful,” she adds after a short pause. “At a time when I felt like things weren‘t working out and I was feeling rejected, that’s when I started writing Ana,” her hit Netflix show. “[Writing] made me feel happy, it fulfilled me, being creative is undoubtedly the best solution. Ok, maybe someone diesn’t hire me, but I go home and I keep creating and I keep having fun. Maybe you like to cook, or direct, or have a side business...I think that all of us, especially now, cannot put all our eggs into one basket. We always need to have something that makes us happy so we can handle rejection and keep pushing forward.

I would tell him first to have some savings and secondly, to have a plan B. If someone wants to come to Los Angeles, great, but fortunately I think that with current technological advances, we are so organized and connected, that often we no longer need to move from your country, because you can audition online from wherever you are. Technology has helped a lot. I suggest you prepare as much as possible. Understand that you are going to be in a global market and that you are going to have to be better and more prepared than before, because you are competing with the most ambitious people with more experience and at the top of their game. What I recommend is that, whether or not you come to the city of Los Angeles, if you want to work with the best in this field, you have to prepare all the time. I myself still have many insecurities, moments where I feel at a disadvantage. That‘s why I said prepare yourself as much as possible, because sometimes I feel like I am swimming upstream, trying not to get left behind. I realize that I have not had the training that I would have liked to have.

“Acting is odd,” she ponders. “You can‘t just rehearse every day like a musician. You have to work on your well-being, at watching films, at reading theater, at reading poetry, at watching productions, you have to constantly prepare yourself and be very disciplined. All of that will lead you to where you want to be.

I don‘t know, maybe what I like, you don’t like. What I recommend is reading a lot of biographies. If you like acting or singing, pay close attention to what the people you admire have done, how they did it, the things they have been through. I love Jane Fonda. Anything that comes out about her, interviews or anything, I always read because it inspires me so much.

La verdad es que yo consumo más primero, comedia, después drama, son los dos géneros que siempre más me han gustado. El terror lo veía, me divierte, no me da miedo y las películas de acción era lo que menos me atraía. El terror es más divertido de filmar y la acción mucho más complicada, más pesada, por los tiempos, etc. Pero la satisfacción de verlo al final todo junto es como WOW, te ves como si realmente estuvieras haciendo algo que nunca harías. Como actor, es cuándo más alejado te ves de realidades que vives tú. Yo soy cero de stunts y cosas así, por eso para mí es súper divertido verme de esa manera y me encantaría seguir haciéndolo.

The truth is that I mainly watch comedies, then dramas. They are the two genres that I have always liked the most. I watched horror films, they amuse me, they don’t scare me and action movies were the least appealing to me. Horror movies are more fun to shoot and action movies are much more complicated, more demanding, due to schedules, etc. But the satisfaction of seeing it all come together at the end is like WOW, you look like you‘re doing something you would never do in real life. As an actor, it is when you see yourself farthest from reality that you feel most alive. I am 0% about stunts and things like that, so for me it is super fun to see myself in that light and I would love to continue doing it.