Santiago Cabrera: I’d love to make a film about Maradona

There are no airs and graces with Santiago Cabrera.


The actor who starred in Merlin, Heroes and Dexter, and is about to dazzle us with his swordplay in The Musketeers, wanders into the London coffee shop where we meet without a PR in sight. He’s even carrying his own clobber for the photo shoot that’s his next appointment.

But then going it alone is Cabrera’s speciality. He puts it down to his globe-trotting background – as the Venezuelan-born son of a Chilean diplomat father, he’s never been in one place long enough to call anywhere home.
‘I’ve never been in any country for more than four years and I’m learning different languages all the time,’ he says. ‘It gives you a different attitude. It could either f*** you up because you don’t know where you belong or it can take you a different way and it can enrich you.
‘I feel very lucky because, although I feel like an outsider, it makes you an excellent observer – and that’s what you need as an actor.’
His latest escapade is The Musketeers, a fresh and refreshingly adult take on the Alexandre Dumas classic that’s set to liven up BBC1 Sunday nights.
The first we see of Cabrera’s character Aramis, he’s sprawled half-naked on a sumptuous bed, having the scars on his torso lovingly caressed by a sexy siren. Does he find it a bind being cast as the smouldering lover and getting his kit off?

Santiago Cabrera played Isaac Mendez in Heroes

‘How you look is part of what acting is,’ he says, ‘but the way I look at it, every actor is a character actor. Someone once told me at a casting “you’re a character actor in a leading man’s body” and I can live with that,’ he laughs, sending himself up.
The introduction to Aramis is, says Cabrera, a touch misleading. ‘He’s not the player you think at first, he’s looking for real love. What I found very appealing about him is that he’s a bit of a loner, he’s sacrificed a comfortable life for a cause.
‘This is a show that’s very much about four equal leads. We’re making a backstory about each of the characters, there’s room for that when you make a series. But it still has a real pace to it.’
The ‘all for one, one for all’ Dumas tale has been much dramatised but Cabrera thinks this version, which co-stars ex-Skins favourite Luke Pasqualino as D’Artagnan, Tom Burke as Athos and Howard Charles as Porthos – with Peter Capaldi adding a touch of evil as the scheming Cardinal Richelieu – has modern appeal.
‘The four are all quite lost in their own way but they care for each other, they care for their brotherhood,’ he says. ‘I think that’s a theme that speaks of today, when it’s easy to feel alienated.

Santiago Cabrera would love to play Maradona if a film of his life was made

‘It gives the show a darkness too, though it’s likeable at the same time. At heart, it’s an adventure fantasy but with real characters.’
The Musketeers was filmed in Prague, handy for Cabrera, who now lives with his wife, a theatre director, in Berlin. The setting was a perfect antidote to a spell in Los Angeles during which he’d been pursuing his career with some success – though he felt pigeonholed.
‘In America, I am brown, I’m “of colour”, so I would be offered Latin roles and I’ve fought against that,’ he says. ‘I don’t want to be put in a category, to be just offered the same sort of thing. For me, it’s all about different roles, telling the stories of the great writers.’
It could have all worked out very differently. He didn’t start drama school in London until he was 21 because up until then his big love was football. He was playing for top-level non-league side Hampton & Richmond, with dreams of a pro career until injuries knocked him back. Given the choice now, would it be football or acting?
‘Oh, football definitely!’ he says without missing a beat. ‘Just think if that was your job – you’d never have any difficulty getting up in the morning. But then I think, if I was a footballer, my career would be pretty well over now I’m 35. With acting, you can have your whole life.’
He’s thought about combining his twin passions. On the pitch Cabrera switched between midfield and attack – perfectly suited to playing the part of Argentine football icon Diego Maradona. ‘I’d love to play him,’ he enthuses. ‘I was interested in getting the rights to his book, to turn it into a film.’
And no doubt the dumpy Diego would love to be played by the charismatic Cabrera. ‘Just give me the money and I’d do it like a shot,’ he declares.