Globe-Trotting Beginnings
Although born in Cancún, Mexico, Ximena Lamadrid and her family moved to Dubai, U.A.E. when she was two months old. Still, while growing up abroad, her Mexican identity was preserved at home. “My parents have some adorable videos of me and my brother as kids when we only spoke Spanish before we started going to school there.”
Sight Unseen
After studying acting in New York and appearing in several short films, Lamadrid found her way back to Mexico with her breakthrough role in Netflix’s Spanish-language hit series ¿Quién mató a Sara? (Who Killed Sara?) When she was chosen for the title role in this project, Lamadrid was virtually unknown. Likewise, she was cast in Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s latest masterpiece BARDO, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths before her show had made waves across Latin America and the world. “Each director and each producer found me and saw something in me before any of the projects I had done were released,” she explained. “That was incredible.”
Bilingual Advantage
While she continues to work on finessing her Spanish after living away from Mexico for over two decades, Lamadrid feels fortunate to be bilingual, a quality that has served her as a great advantage. “This was a great tool for me in Alejandro’s film. It was important that my character spoke Spanish but was also fluent in English because she is part of a Mexican family that has lived their whole lives in Los Angeles.”
Daniel Giménez Cacho and Ximema Lamadrid
Learning from a Master
Working on BARDO exposed Lamadrid to Iñárritu’s intense artistic approach to storytelling, in a production that featured sequences with hundreds of extras and long takes that raised the level of complexity of the shoot. “Alejandro is tough and very detail-oriented,” the young actor noted. “He is very special and that’s why his movies are in their own league. He doesn’t stop until the shot is what he was looking for.”
Career Vision
Lamadrid hopes that BARDO will introduce her to new audiences and expand her opportunities in the near future. But as she enjoys the fruit of her labor, the emerging talent never takes it for granted. “What I’m most thankful for are the rejections and those times where you feel like you can’t go on anymore,” she said. “And the difficult moments that make you grow and evolve as an artist and as a human.”
