You won't know him unless you watch Mexican soaps, but Kuno Becker could be film's next big thing. He tells Davin O'Dwyer about the football movie set to make his name
Nurturing a film star must be like nurturing a footballer. First you spot the innate talent - the ease in front of the camera or the good first touch. Then you watch as they cut their teeth on a modest TV show or in the reserve team. If they prove themselves, you give them opportunities to shine a little brighter, with a supporting role in a feature film or a few substitute appearances with 20 minutes to go. All the while you make sure they keep focused, not getting too distracted by the money or attention. Then, when the moment is right, you let them show what they've learned, with a starring role or a starting place against Chelsea.
Kuno Becker is this year's "exciting new movie talent", groomed to explode into the public consciousness, and he happens to be playing this year's exciting new football talent in Goal, a film by the British director Danny Cannon. A lot is riding on Becker's ability to convince as both leading man and skilful striker. Goal is the first part of a planned trilogy, following the life and career of Santiago Muñez, a young Mexican immigrant, from his discovery in the barrios of Los Angeles to fame in the Premiership with Newcastle United. Real football stars have cameos throughout the film, including Zinédine Zidane, Alan Shearer, Patrick Kluivert and, perhaps inevitably, David Beckham. Sequels will see Muñez move from northern England to Real Madrid, with the final film showing him at the World Cup.
That's a rocket-like trajectory for a footballer, and the films promise Becker a similar path to success. Being plucked from relative obscurity to star in such a project is a rare opportunity, and it brings plenty of pressure. "Danny Cannon saw my previous work, and he knew I could do the acting part of it," he says. "It was the football part he needed to know about." Becker is on the slight side for the Premiership, and he is getting on a bit for his character to be starting as a professional footballer - he'll be 28 in January - but, even after a long day of media interviews, he has an aura of effortless healthiness, and his wide-set eyes are brilliantly expressive. It's easy to see why the movie scouts picked him out for stardom.
The work that convinced Cannon to give him the part included a role in Soñadoras, a long- running Mexican soap that made Becker a household name in Spanish-speaking America, and a challenging, villainous part opposite Antonio Banderas and Emma Thompson in Christopher Hampton's film Imagining Argentina, from 2003.
Playing a sports star was a new challenge. "I of course wanted to look as good as possible playing football, and the action will look great, but it was super, super hard," says Becker.
Cannon and Michael Barrett, his director of photography, are veterans of the CSI television franchise in the US, where frantic editing and vibrant colours bring criminal pathology to dizzying life. What on earth will they do to the free-flowing game of soccer?
"We had cameras everywhere - Steadicams, cameras on cranes, zoom cameras in the crowd. There was a lot of work going into getting it to look good. It took a long time, a lot of shots, but you will enjoy the movie, hopefully, because it shows what it's like for these guys, rather than just staging a game."
This is Becker's favourite theme: how Goal tries to get behind the game and show the lives of and pressures on the pros. "The football is less important than the story: the fame and the money and the women, and how these guys cope with that sort of pressure. Why pay to watch actors play football? Just watch footballers play football. Watch Real against Barcelona. If we were just re-creating a match, it would be boring."
Given Goal's aims, Newcastle United is an ideal choice as the film's setting. It has become a byword for footballing dysfunction, with managers coming and going, the club's directors insulting St James' Park's fanatical fans, players' social lives hitting the tabloids and, notoriously, team-mates Lee Bowyer and Kieron Dyer brawling during a match in April this year. Did Becker immerse himself in his role, method-acting style, to research footballers' hedonistic lifestyles?
"Too busy filming," he says. "We were in Los Angeles when the fight happened, and it was so disgraceful, two team-mates brawling. We filmed mostly in St James' Park, which is great - to feel the 55,000 fans screaming for you is amazing - but it's also a lot of pressure. I trained with the youth team, and then I'd do gym work with the first team in the afternoon, so I knew those guys. When two start fighting, it shows the passion."
Although his character might have been brought up with a similar passion for scrapping his way to the top, Becker was raised far from the barrios. From the age of six he spent a few months every year at music school in the Austrian city of Salzburg, where he became an accomplished violinist. But rather than follow a professional career as a musician, he decided at 17 to take up acting. "I went to drama school in Mexico, did a lot of TV parts, but I wanted to stretch myself, get some movies."
Becker looks set to join the wave of Mexican actors making an impression in Hollywood and Europe, led by the likes of Salma Hayek, Gael García Bernal and Diego Luna - who was, as it happens, originally cast as Muñez.
Becker resists being categorised as part of a Mexican rat pack, though. "I know Diego Luna, I've met him, but not so much the rest of the Mexican scene. I have my family and two friends from childhood who I hang out with back in Mexico, rather than being part of a scene."
Even his name sets him apart. Surely it's a stage name, designed, perhaps, to evoke Beckham. "My grandfather was from Berlin, so it's unusual for a Latino actor, because it's not a common name. It's not González, for sure."
Becker is diplomatic about the change in casting. "Michael Winterbottom [ the project's original director] and Diego were going to do it. Then the whole project stalled, and nearly a year later it came back to life with Danny, and he recast it. I was very lucky to get the opportunity." That stroke of luck has brought Becker some unease, though. "I hate the other side of my job, having to be seen and meet people. I love the acting, [ and] I don't mind promoting - that's part of it, I know. But I don't really do the parties."
He may be unable to resist them if the film is as big a hit as its makers are hoping. The producers are so confident about Goal that the second film starts production in October. "We are hoping this will take off. The game is getting huge in America right now; every kid plays it; it's popular with everybody. It shows, I think, when you see [ the US film studio] Buena Vista backing it, that the game is taking off there."
The second part of the trilogy will also mean a change of location. "I'm looking forward to filming in Madrid and Italy; it should be warmer than Newcastle. We were filming in January and February, so it was cold. We had fake rain and mud. It was miserable sometimes."
And what of the third film, set at the World Cup? Which country will Muñez be representing, his native Mexico or his adopted US? The end of the trilogy will demand no less than Becker's character lifting the cup. A US victory would push credibility, right? Becker is keeping shtum or, at least, pleading ignorance. "We honestly haven't decided yet. We'll have to see how Santiago's story develops."
By the time Muñez reaches that game, Becker should already have established his own reputation as a player. A player in Hollywood, that is.
Goal is due to be released on September 30th