Tonatiuh’s smile betrays him. As broad and sincere as it is, it betrays how tired he is. The 30-year-old Los Angeles actor is at the peak of his career, but getting to the top takes hard work and has left him a little breathless. In a conversation from his living room in Los Angeles, Tona (as his friends call him, a nickname shorter than his stage name and much shorter than his real name, Tonatiuh Elizarrarz) admits that he sometimes feels “out of sync,” overwhelmed by all the work he’s done and continues to do, only to return to his normal life every night. As he summarizes, as a true representative of his generation, he lives “a bit like Hannah Montana”, living a double life.
It’s understandable that he’s tired. In recent months he has become a star of the cinema scene. With a career in short films and series that dates back to The Decadence, she now stars alongside none other than Diego Luna and Jennifer Lopez (who also serves as a producer) in the film The Kiss of the Spider Womandirected by Bill Condon. The highly anticipated project saw Tonatiuh step into the shoes of prisoner Luis Molina, who, while incarcerated, lives in a 1940s fantasy and cinematic dream world. For the production of the film, the actor sang, danced and lost 44 kilos.
The Los Angeles resident is first-generation, born to Mexican parents. “I, as the son of immigrants, have always acted as the little lawyer, the little doctor and the translator,” he says. For a long time he helped his parents with English, as many descendants of migrants did. “And I have always felt a great disgust for injustice,” he continues.
When he was younger, he won a scholarship to study law, but now recognizes that he can’t see himself as a lawyer. “I would be unbearable,” he laughs. But he will never stop advocating for the causes that impact his life, and now that he has become a public figure, he has doubled down on his commitment.
During an interview, he does not hesitate to speak openly, in flawless Spanish, about the harshness with which his country treats the migrants who have worked so hard for this country, about deportation and about the importance of keeping pride alive and speaking up for your community.
He also shares that he was the last one to be cast in this film. He sat in on his audition tape in late December, after learning to tango, and was told that the producers would continue to watch. He spent that night with his mother. They lit a candle and asked God to help him give up control, to flow (“I have a very obsessive mind,” he says). The next day, the film’s team announced that the role was his. The role of Luis Molina, a gay man who had been sent to prison for a public scandal during the Argentine dictatorship, a character based on Manuel Puig’s novel, was now in his hands.
The actor has a lot in common with Molina, a man who doesn’t want to break the mold, but for whom breaking away from it is simply a way of life. “Ever since I was young, I never understood people’s obsession with telling others what they should like or what they should do,” says Tonatiuh. “I’ve always been very stubborn about it. I mean, if I wanted to play with dolls, or if I wanted to dance, sing… I hated when people told me it was bad for a child to do that. That point where you say to people, ‘Who are you to say that?’ —I’ve always had it. And in my youth, I always loved transforming and changing myself, playing with different cultures, different groups of friends, learning a different kind of music. “I have an unbearable hunger for life,” he says, laughing.
He has had that desire to create, perform and transform ever since he saw his first musical, Evilat the Pantages Theater in Los Angeles, with friends from school when he was 12 years old. “I remember very clearly seeing the magician and saying, ‘He has such a beautiful life! I want to live those lives!’ I have been obsessed with musicals ever since and have always loved the power they have to transport you into a world through a song,” he says. That’s why the fact that his first big project is a musical – and made with Condon, Lopez and Luna – makes it even more special. And that’s why he gave it his all, took classes, learned new skills and lost weight dramatically in just 50 days.
Although he has worked on dozens of projects over the past decade, such as the series Life, Hidden canyons AND The Loud Househis The Kiss of the Spider Woman this gave Tonatiuh more visibility and also a platform. The Latino community he knows is made up of the “most hardworking people” who “live happily.” “What I love, more than anything, is that our film can remind people of that dignity, and that it’s also a way to remind Hollywood that Latinos have always been a part of it. There is no Latino Hollywood.” he says.
The son of Mexican immigrants, he is well aware and concerned about what is happening in the United States, the frequent and indiscriminate deportation raids of Latinos. American by birth, he says he obtained a Mexican passport this year. “I always carry it with me. Not because I feel the need for it, but to have it when I go to places where there are privileged people who don’t think about it, to remind them when they are interested in getting to know me. I don’t want them to erase what’s happening to my people with the extraordinaryness of what’s happening to me, because right now everyone wants to hold my hand and kiss me and give me me, but then I take out my passport and tell them: ‘I’m one of those people too.'”
The story of Molina e The Kiss of the Spider Woman it is also the story of the queer community, with which Tonatiuh identifies. He thinks it’s important to continue telling LGBTQ stories, even in the 21st centuryst century? “Yes, definitely. What I love about both communities is that they come from a history deeply filled with resistance,” he reflects, speaking of Latinos and the LGBTQ community. “They both need that resilience, that tenacity. They need to work to maintain their dignity, to maintain their freedom, to fight, to remind people who we are. Because they want to humiliate us, they want to make us small,” he says.
Tonatiuh has been aware of this feeling since he was very young, as he recalls: “I remember that as a child I felt a certain confusion, I was ashamed of something, as if I had a secret. But I said: ‘Why? This is my superpower!’ My identity is part of who I am. “I’m not a politician, I’m an artist, and as an artist, it brings me so much joy to be able to share and create spaces of joy for these communities.”
These are not empty words. Tonatiuh says he returns to his old high school every summer to teach acting to students. Just a few days ago I purchased a projection screen for the school and invited them to see the film “to thank them”. “And they cried in my arms because they never could have imagined that something like this would be possible,” she says. “They know me and I know them. And it would be so bad to forget where I come from, it seems so ridiculous… Because I have so much pride.”
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