Love stories, exchange students and internships: Hollywood celebrities who speak Spanish

Among Latinos there is a sixth sense that is activated when someone from a big screen star speaks in Spanish. And when the wink comes with an affective tone and leaves behind any demagogic reverence, it touches intimate fibers and the adoption is immediate. The accents, the cultures, the customs, the loves, any argument is valid to captivate the stars of Hollywood, who from time to time fall surrendered to the charms. Like that fifteen-year-old amazed by the customs and culture of centuries and centuries ago; or that young woman in search of her destiny, the adolescent who is always curious and restless, the girl who always returns to the place where she was happy, or the acclaimed actor who is increasingly in love with her. Five Hollywood stories in Spanish.

Gwyneth Paltrow

Gwynelth Paltrow He was 15 years old when he traveled from Los Angeles to Spain as an exchange student to study Spanish and spent some time in a small town around Talavera de la Reina, in the Toledo region. What for many of her classmates was one more requirement of her school activities, for her it became love at first sight and she maintained the link with Spanish culture forever.

“I had the most wonderful experience there. It really changed my life”said the actress who fell in love with Spanish gastronomy and with the cultural and architectural charm of the region. “Everything has a history, and the buildings have years and years and years”. But the protagonist of shakespeare in love She kept in touch with the family that took her in, whom she visits every time work or pleasure takes her back to Spain. The love was reciprocal and the city of Talavera gave her the title of favorite daughter in 2003. In addition, he allowed him to develop professionally by taking several bodies away from his Saxon colleagues when it came to mastering the language of Cervantes.

Megan Markle

When she did not imagine being the Duchess of Sussex and combined her irrepressible vocation as an actress with a growing interest in politics, the American Megan Markle He lived for a time in Buenos Aires. She was in the turbulent year of 2002 when she settled in the country’s capital to do an internship at the US embassy, ​​as part of her studies in theater and international relations at Northwestern University in Illinois. “I was in Buenos Aires in full economic devaluation. I really thought I would have a political career”, Meghan revealed about those years of economic crisis.

But at the end After her internship, the young woman returned to the United States, where she made contact with a television producer and the rest is known history. Since then, his life took an unexpected turn, but he did not forget his days in Buenos Aires, much less his way of speaking. During an interview in The Late Late Show with Craig Fergusonrecounted this experience and surprised the driver by speaking in perfect Argentinian, punctuating the tune. “He is like the Italian,” she explained, alluding to the times of immigration. “Where are you from? When you arrive? Hey look at you!”, he enumerated, before the astonished look of the interviewer. In addition, already in a more neutral Spanish, Meghan had a scene spoken entirely in Spanish in the series Suitsin a nod to Latin soap operas.

freddie highmore

“I haven’t been in Spain for a long time, but I’m going to speak Spanish to keep practicing”. british actor freddie highmore surprised the journalist Andreu Buenafuent during a promotional tour of the series The good doctor through Iberian lands. There he said that he takes advantage of his fluent command of the language to answer some interviews and thus not lose practice.

To be in tune with his words, he appealed to the universal language of football, since his last visit had been in 2012, a time when the Spanish team dominated the World Cups and European Championships. the protagonist of Bates Motel he wanted to go see a game at a bar and he came up with a plan: I thought that they would not accept me because I was English, and I made up that I had a Galician grandmother. I said it was from Zapateira”, she explained with a laugh. Of course, he did not negotiate his fanaticism for Arsenal in London, one of his city teams.

The joke continued with a call to the mayor of the region who invited him to learn about his fictional roots. The concrete thing is that his great command of Spanish is due to his own concerns. Degree in Spanish and Arabic Philology at the University of Cambridge, vHe lived for a long time in Madrid, where he received a scholarship at a law firm that hired him to translate documents. In addition to Spanish, he showed a broad command of French and Arabic, which made him stand out among his employees. However, his vocation is elsewhere.

Anya Taylor-Joy

Although she was born in Miami, the actress of queen’s gambit She lived from a very young age until she was six years old in Argentina. She attended Colegio Northlands de Olivos and she keeps those moments of happiness so present that she decided to return whenever she has the opportunity. Like Megan Markle, she Anna carries the Argentine tune high and can pronounce a “dulce de leche” well contributed in full dialogue in English as if it were the most natural thing in the world and as if there was a possibility that there was a better flavor of ice cream. He also knew how to list his favorite childhood foods, along with provolone bread and empanadas, which he regretted are not so easily available in the northern country.

In an interview with teleshow the actress had referred to the link with Argentina . “What I miss the most is that everyone who knows me there knows how I am since I was a baby. And since we travel so much with my family, this is the strangest thing. Being able to be in a place where people saw me grow up. I miss my nicknames, speaking Spanish all the time. There is a large part of my soul and my heart. That is why I visit Argentina at least once a year. I want to go back right now ”, she had pointed out at that time.

Matt Damon

In 2003, Matt Damon fell in love at first sight with the salteña Luciana Bozan Barroso, whom she met while working as a waitress in a Miami bar. They had three daughters and are still together 20 years later, proof of any Hollywood curse. However, when it comes to speaking Spanish, the actor in the saga jason bourne he feels closer to the Mexican idioms he learned at the age of 15 than to his day-to-day life with his wife. “It’s easier for me to talk to a Mexican. My wife is from Argentina and it is very difficult to understand her”, he acknowledged, in Spanish, in an interview.

However, when choosing a memorable sporting event, the Cambridge-born actor chose Argentine soccer: “The craziest thing I’ve ever seen without a doubt was a football match in Argentina.”assured Damon in the program Hot Ones and recounted his experience in the first person. He was visiting the country to spend Christmas and wanted to go see a Boca game, a team of which his wife’s family is a fan. His initial plan was to go with the boys, but his political uncle warned him that it was not a good idea. He immediately understood why. “We had to go through three police checkpoints. There were barbed wire fences, I mean, it was totally crazy.. There were policemen in riot gear,” he explained in surprise.

The match in question was between Boca and Tigre on Racing’s pitch, the last of the 2008 triangle that consecrated Xeneize champion. And if he didn’t understand the before, he didn’t understand the after either: “Our team won, but we had to stay there because they needed time for the other team to leave the neighborhood. You had to give them like 45 minutes for that. When they let us out, they actually kept us in some sort of cage.. He was really crazy ”, closed the actor.

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