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Features
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Spaniard on a Train
Twice nominated for a Best Actor Goya Award in his native Spain, actor Eduardo Noriega is set to cross over via a pair of 2008 English-language releases.
Sunday, January 20, 2008 at 9:00 AM
By Pam Grady
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Matthew Simmons/WireImage.com
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Looking like a Spanish version of Peter Gallagher
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"It's never this cold in Spain," Eduardo Noriega tells FilmStew with a laugh. He makes his home in sunny Madrid, but the bitter chill and drifts of snow that greet the 34-year-old actor in Park City provide the perfect weather for the Sundance Film Festival world premiere of Transsiberian, Brad Anderson's wintry thriller set aboard a Moscow-board train. Woody Harrelson and Emily Mortimer play naïve Americans who become ensnared in a dangerous underworld, while Noriega is their seductive new friend Carlos, whose charm may mask sinister intentions.
For Noriega, Transsiberian represents an important step in his career. This is his first trip to Park City, but he originally came to the attention of Sundance Film Festival audiences in 1997 with his role as the arrogant businessman who loses everything, even his looks, in a car crash in Alejandro Amenabar's Open Your Eyes. Noriega went on to win a Goya nomination (Spain's equivalent of the Oscar) for that role.
Since then, he has continued to move forward, building a diverse resume. He was a gay Argentine bank robber in 2000's Burnt Money, the caretaker in Guillermo Del Toro's The Devil's Backbone and he received a second Goya nod in 2005 for his role as a secret agent posing as a Basque terrorist in El Lobo. He has worked all over the world and now he is intent on conquering America.
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Matthew Simmons/WireImage.com
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Co-stars Harrelson, Mortimer at Sundance premiere
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In addition to his appearance in Transsiberian, he will be seen next month in Pete Travis' Vantage Point, a drama about an assassination attempt on the U.S. president, sharing the screen with a large cast that includes William Hurt, Dennis Quaid, Forest Whitaker, and Sigourney Weaver. It is a career that has Noriega trotting the globe and that is exactly the way he wants it.
"I'm so lucky, because I've been in Africa, in Madagascar," he begins. "I've been in Europe, in France, Spain. I've been in Switzerland. I've been in the United States, shooting a movie in California. I've been in Mexico City, shooting Vantage Point. I've been in Argentina, Chile."
"I want to travel all around the world and visit different cultures," he adds. "Hopefully, I can do different stories of different cultures. That's going to be rewarding for me, personally, as a person, as a man, not only as an actor."
Looking out past his perch in the Hollywood Life Lounge out onto Park City's snowy Main Street where night is quickly falling, he is delighted that his career has taken him here. "For me, this is such a beautiful town," he observes. "This is the first time I've been in a village like this, like the old movies, the Western movies when the town is just a main street, then the houses and the saloons. For me, it's like being in a movie. It's a beautiful village."
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Matthew Simmons/WireImage.com
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Writer-director Brad Anderson
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"At the same time, it's really important for me to be at this festival, for the movie is going to be definitely important,” Noriega adds. “It's going to get distribution in the United States, so it's like a gift for me to be here."
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