Ana Claudia

Best known to U.S. moviegoers as Coco, the illegal Mexican immigrant who crosses the border illicitly to find herself at the mercy of an exploitative capitalist system (and face to face with the "kill floor"), in Richard Linklater's ambitious Fast Food Nation (2006), onscreen performer Ana Claudia Talancón actually made her first major cinematic splash several years prior. At age 18, Talancón landed the female lead in José Buíl and Marisa Sistach's period romantic drama El Cometa (1999). This role made producers take note of the blossoming actress, and numerous projects followed, including the female lead in Carlos Carrera's critically worshipped The Crime of Padre Amaro (2002) -- as a fiery Latina who leads a Mexican priest down the wayward path. Nation, of course, represented Talancón's stateside breakthrough, and though the film itself reeled in only limited returns, the actress held her own opposite such A-listers as Greg Kinnear and Ethan Hawke -- no small feat for a neophyte. More importantly, Talancón's work on this picture helped open the door to several additional prestigious projects, notably a supporting role in Mike Newell's lyrical romance Love in the Time of Cholera (2007). ~ Nathan Southern, Rovi