DIEGO LUNA RISING `CRIMINAL' ACTING BOOSTS MEXICAN STAR'S PROFILE EVEN HIGHER.

Byline: Bob Strauss Staff Writer

Diego Luna was already making it in Hollywood.

The 24-year-old Mexican actor, who became an international sensation with the release of the socially conscious teen sex comedy ``Y Tu Mama Tambien,'' had appeared in several American productions (``Before Night Falls,'' ``Open Range,'' ``The Terminal'') and even co-starred in ``Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights,'' before his latest movie, ``Criminal,'' hit theaters today.

But making ``Criminal'' introduced Luna to something quite different from the world of Hollywood: Los Angeles.

``I finally got to know the city, realized there was a whole world other than hotels and promotions and movies, you know?'' says the ever-exuberant Luna in slightly accented English. ``It's a big city. ... In fact, I realized there's a Mexico in here! It's like Mexico; people walk in the streets, they don't take the SUV to go and buy something at the store. They have Mexican stores, everything they sell is Mexican, Mexican food - great tacos over there.''

Filmed across a swath of the city running, roughly, from East L.A. to Westwood, ``Criminal'' charts 24 hours in the lives of two con artists, Luna's Rodrigo and John C. Reilly's Richard, as they pull off various low- level scams and pursue one big killing. The older Richard rescues Rodrigo from a card-club grift going south and soon realizes that the kid's fluent Spanish and ingratiating charm could be a valuable asset to his business.

But who is Rodrigo, really? We eventually find out that he could be hiding a lot more than even slick Richard can guess.

``This was a nice role, because I could speak everything I know,'' says Luna, who began acting in his native Mexico City at the age of 7. ``I've been preparing myself for this role my whole life in a way. This guy spends all day long acting, pretending to be somebody else and telling stories that are not true. And that's what I do.''

Latino L.A.

Although ``Criminal'' is a remake of an Argentinean movie, ``Nine Queens,'' the character Luna plays did not necessarily have to be Latino. But director Gregory Jacobs had been impressed with what he'd seen of Luna's work, and he wanted the movie to make a point about contemporary Los Angeles as well.

``I really felt strongly about making one of the characters Latino and one of them white and bringing these subtle sort of issues of race and class and the stratification of L.A. into the movie,'' Jacobs says. ``I wanted to populate the movie with people of different ethnicities, because I feel like that's L.A. ... this 21st-century melting pot, yet this sort of slightly dysfunctional melting pot.''

Co-star Reilly (``Chicago,'' ``Gangs of New York'') says that there was nothing dysfunctional about working with his co-star - except that Luna usually fell for the practical jokes he repeatedly played on him.

``Diego's one of the most charming people you'll ever meet,'' Reilly says. ``He's a really genuinely nice guy. From the moment I met him ... oh God, you just want to hug the guy.

``Diego has accomplished a lot, he's been acting professionally since he was a kid, so it's not like he's exactly a tenderfoot in the business,'' Reilly adds. ``But he is entering American films for the first time, and we had a lot to talk about at lunch. We ended up being really close friends. He's a lot of fun to be with, and he's very gullible.''

Gullible like a fox. Similar to Gael Garcia Bernal, his ``Y Tu Mama'' co-star and best friend since early childhood, Luna is getting as much film work as he can handle in Latin America and Europe as well as here. But although he has become a favorite of Oscar-winning American filmmakers such as Steven Spielberg and Kevin Costner, stateside success is not at the top of Luna's agenda.

An actor's focus

``I never dreamed about going to Hollywood,'' Luna says. ``I've dreamed of working with some directors, like the Coen brothers, so I'm happy to work here. But I'm also happy to be able to travel and to work in Mexico and South America and Spain. I don't see it as a goal to make it in the States. My goal is to make good movies and tell stories that I care about - and that can happen anywhere.''

As proof of that, Luna still calls Mexico City home, although he admits that he's been so busy in the past year that he's hardly spent any time at his house. Still, he recently led the ensemble of the multiple-award-winning Mexican caper film ``Nicotina,'' which opened in Los Angeles last month, and is currently shooting ``Only God Knows'' in Mexico and Brazil.

But there are practical, not just artistic, reasons for working outside of his country's borders. For one thing, Mexican movies have ridiculously low budgets.

``There's a big difference'' between even an American indie like ``Criminal'' and Mexican productions. ``Money always makes a big difference. If I do a big Mexican movie, it costs $3 million. Every peso is spent on things you can see on the screen. What they spent on catering in 'Terminal' is what we spend on the movie, basically. This one ('Criminal') is called a low-budget movie, but for me it felt like a big studio movie. They had all the toys they wanted. But we shot in 28 days, so it felt like Mexico. We were all in a rush, and there was never time enough.''

Mexico style

Then there's the fact that, despite producing such world-class auteurs as ``Y Tu Mama's'' Alfonso Cuaron, ``Amores Perros' '' Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu and ``Hellboy's'' Guillermo del Toro, Mexico's movie business is a pretty small operation.

``We do 15, 20 movies a year in Mexico, and you can't really live on that,'' Luna notes. ``There are great filmmakers in Mexico, lots of talent. But there's no industry to support that talent. All these directors, they do one good movie and then they leave the country. It's kind of sad that their first option is not Mexico.''

Perhaps, but nothing new to a guy who literally grew up in Mexico's even more underfunded theater world. Luna's father is widely regarded as the country's best set designer, but he always had to supplement his stage work with paying architectural gigs. Although he's one of the few Mexican actors who now actually makes a living from movie work, young Diego long had to toil in the television field as a child actor.

It was inevitable that Diego would go into show business, though. His English-born mother, a costume designer, was killed in a car accident when Diego was only 2.

``So I had to spend a lot of time in the theater with my dad, who had to be mother and father at the same time - and he did a good job,'' Luna explains. ``But obviously I spent a lot of time watching other people act and do all of these crazy things, and I was always amazed by the actors' lives. For a moment I thought I was going to be more on the technical side because of my father. But no, the first time I acted, I said, 'Ah, this is fun, pretending to be somebody else.' ''

Filling the gap

Luna also admits that while he was too young when it happened to really feel traumatized by the loss of his mother, he's sought the nurturing of surrogate families from the various acting troupes he's joined throughout his life.

``It's tougher for the ones who have a mother and father to understand,'' he realizes. ``For me, I don't even remember her. Now, the things I think I remember are pictures that I have animated in my head - and dreams. There is nothing real about it. For me, it's more that I know I had an amazing mother because of the people that loved her that are still here. And I represent, for them, what my mother left. That's really nice, but it's always harder for them than for me, because I never needed a mother, really. Of course sometimes I cried, and even today I can get depressed. But my life has been like this since I was 2, so I know how to live like this.''

As long as we're on the subject of intense relations, Luna is apparently as big a sex symbol in Mexico as Justin Timberlake is here. He claims to have a steady girlfriend at the moment, but he won't reveal her name. Furthermore, his conversation is peppered with allusions to love affairs gone wrong.

So what's the story? Has movie stardom made the boyish charmer a babe magnet?

``Of course I'd be stupid not to notice,'' he says, blushing, about a perceivable uptick in female attention. ``My father says that it's because I'm a very charming guy. But I dunno, I don't get that much attention. It takes me a little while to get close to the girl I like. I don't use this to get close to girls. The gym is better.''

His charmed life 

The big fun in life, Luna says, comes from playing soccer, eating and drinking and talking with friends until the wee hours of the morning, and making the movies he wants to make without any kind of borders getting in his way. And from doing what he's wanted to do most for practically his entire life, regardless of the losses that made it possible.

``My life has been very easy,'' Luna reckons. ``I see so many young people not knowing what they want to do in life, and for me it was so easy. I knew since I was 7 that this is what I want, and I never felt like I had to lose anything. Yes, I had to give up some things, but those things were never as big and joyful as my job is.''

Bob Strauss, [phone]

bob.strauss(at)dailynews.com

The stats

BIRTHDAY: Dec. 29, 1979

HOME: Mexico City

NOTABLE FILMS:

``Before Night Falls'' (2000)

``Y Tu Mama Tambien'' (2001)

``Frida'' (2002)

``Open Range'' (2003)

``Nicotina'' (2003)

``Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights'' (2004)

``The Terminal'' (2004)

FUN FACT: ``Y Tu Mama'' co-star Gael Garcia Bernal has been Luna's best friend since early childhood.

CAPTION(S):

3 photos, box

Photo:

(1 -- cover -- color) Fine young `Criminal'

Mexican sensation Diego Luna does L.A.

Tom Mendoza/Staff Photographer

(2) The pairing of John C. Reilly, left, and Diego Luna by ``Criminal'' director Gregory Jacobs aims to say something about the race and class divide in Los Angeles.

(3) no caption (Diego Luna)

Box:

The stats (see text)