Diego Luna

Diego Luna, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Julia Jentsch at Berlinale 2017

Luna acted in his first play at age seven. As a child actor, he appeared in several telenovelas and films.[8] In 1992, he had arcs on El abuelo y yo and Ángeles sin paraíso. As a teenager, Luna was part of the main casts of El premio mayor (1995–1996) and La vida en el espejo (1999–2000), playing the main characters' son;[9][10] he also starred in the films Un hilito de sangre (A Trickle of Blood; 1995), El cometa (The Comet; 1999), and Un dulce olor a muerte (A Sweet Scent of Death; 1995), which made him a teen star.[11] He had small roles in the films Todo el poder (Gimme the Power; 2000) and Before Night Falls (2000), Luna's first international film.

Luna starred as Tenoch Iturbide alongside Gael García Bernal in Y tu mamá también (2001), a Mexican road trip film directed by Alfonso Cuarón.[8] A critical and box office success, the role brought him international stardom.[8] The film was the beginning series of high-profile collaborations with childhood friend García Bernal,[7] with whom he would costar in several films and go on to establish Canana Films. For these roles and others, the two are considered to be faces of the Nuevo Cine Mexicano film movement.[12]

In 2002, Luna starred in Vampires: Los Muertos and the Academy Award-winning Frida. He appeared in Open Range (2003), The Terminal (2004) alongside Tom Hanks, Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights (2004) (a Cuban-based reimagining of Dirty Dancing), Criminal (2004), Only God Knows (2006), Fade to Black (2006), Mister Lonely (2007), Rudo y Cursi (2008), Just Walking (2008), and Milk (2008),

In the early 2010s, Luna co-starred in the Will Ferrell Spanish-language comedy Casa de mi Padre (2012) and appeared in the action films Contraband and Elysium.[13] He appeared opposite Katy Perry in her music video for "The One That Got Away;" as of 2022, the music video has nearly 1 billion views on YouTube.[14] He starred in the animated musical comedy The Book of Life (2014) whose soundtrack charted in numerous countries.

In August 2015, it was announced that Luna was part of the cast of what was then known as Star Wars: Rogue One.[15] Rogue One: A Star Wars Story premiered in 2016, and his portrayal of portrayed Cassian Andor,[16] a captain and intelligence officer of the Rebel Alliance, brought him international attention. He reprised the role in Andor, the 2022 Disney+ series centered around the character. A second season began production in Fall 2022.[17]

Luna starred as Mexican drug cartel leader Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo in the Netflix series Narcos: Mexico,[18] which premiered in November 2018.[19] He appeared in the first two seasons of the show. Film roles around this time included ensemble roles in the auteur films If Beale Street Could Talk (2018) and A Rainy Day in New York (2019), and a starring role in the 2020 indie drama Wander Darkly. Luna had a number of voice acting roles in children's animation; notably, he is part of every installment of Guillermo del Toro's Tales of Arcadia television franchise: Trollhunters (2016), 3Below (2018), Wizards (2020) and the film Trollhunters: Rise of the Titans (2021).

Luna at the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival.

With frequent collaborator Gael García Bernal, Luna created the production company Canana Films in 2005.[20] Together, they have produced dozens of Mexican film and television productions. Notably, they executive produced the 2009 Cary Fukunaga film Sin nombre, which was honored by the Sundance Film Festival and Independent Spirit Awards, and the 2011 thriller Miss Bala which competed in Un Certain Regard at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival. In October 2019, it was announced that Luna and García Bernal were joining the Creative Advisory Board for the TV and film development company EXILE Content.[21]

In 2007, Luna directed his first film, a documentary about Mexican boxer Julio César Chávez.[22][23] His first feature film, the dramedy Abel, premiered at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival and received positive reviews.[24][25]

In 2012, Luna directed the biopic Cesar Chávez; the film starred Michael Peña as Cesar Chávez, the founder of the United Farm Workers, America Ferrera, and Rosario Dawson.[26] The film premiered at the 64th Berlin International Film Festival and was awarded an Audience Award for Narrative Feature at the 2014 SXSW Film Festival.[27] The film received mixed reviews.[28] The following year, he created and directed the docu-series Back Home, which follows celebrity guests on a journey to their family homelands.[29]

His next feature film was Mr. Pig, also known as Sr. Pig, which premiered at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival. The film stars Danny Glover and Maya Rudolph whose characters travel on a road trip through Mexico.[30]

In 2020, Luna created the Amazon Prime Video talk show Pan y Circo, which he produced, directed, and hosts; the following year, he received a Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Daytime Talent in a Spanish Language Program.[31] He created his first scripted television series, the satirical drama Everything Will Be Fine, which was released on Netflix in 2021. Luna is also an executive producer of his series Andor which premiered in 2022.

Diego and Felicity Jones at the premiere of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story in Japan.

Luna, García Bernal, and Elena Fortes co-founded Ambulante, also known as the Ambulante Documentary Film Festival, an organization and film festival whose mission is for documentary films to be used as tools for transformation.[32][33] The organization received the prestigious Washington Office on Latin America's Human Rights Award in 2011.[34] In January 2015, Luna narrated a video of theirs about the obstacles faced by children migrating from their home countries and seeking refuge in the U.S.[35]

Luna was a member of the 2016 jury for the Un Certain Regard section of the Cannes Film Festival.[36]