A
t the age of 12, Eiza González lost her father in a motorcycle accident. Fifteen years later, she’s starring in Baby Driver – a film about a getaway driver who has to listen to music all the time to drown out tinnitus caused by a car crash that took his parents at an early age. The parallels are clear. “It definitely hit home because I saw it first-hand. It’s one of the reasons I felt a connection with the story – this addiction to the adrenalin, the rush,” González tells The Red Bulletin. “I inherited that from my father, his addiction was running cars and motorcycles. It’s my homage to him, the way I let go of a part of my life that hurts. He lost his life doing what he loved, and that makes me feel really good about it. He would be very excited about this.” He would be very excited about most of the choices González has made in her life. At age 17, the Mexican actress became a sensation in two hit Latin-American TV shows –
THE RED BULLETIN
Lola...Érase Una Vez and Sueña Conmigo – both about a teenage girl with dreams of being a rock star. In a case of life mimicking art, González released two successful solo albums before catching the eye of director Robert Rodriguez who cast her as Santanico Pandemonium, the snakedancing vampire vixen, in From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series. For Baby Driver, where every shot is choreographed to one of the summer’s essential soundtracks, González’ affinity for music also played a crucial role. “When we got the script we got the playlist, so I drove to my audition listening to the music. It was a chance to get what [director] Edgar Wright was feeling. It really helped me get into character.” That character is Darling, girlfriend to Jon Hamm’s Buddy, and a bank robber for whom González channelled a real-life criminal. “I based her on Candice [Martinez], ‘the cell-phone bandit’. She’s famous for walking into banks on her phone.” González also learned to fire two machine guns at the same time (“They’re goddamn heavy – you’ve got to learn to control it. I had to lift a lot weights.”) and took part in car chases with co-stars Hamm, Jamie Foxx and Ansel Elgort. “The reason they look so real is because they are real – we were in the car 16 hours a day.” Next up, Gonzalez is in Alita Battle Angel, a Japanese manga adaptation that James Cameron has been trying to make for 17 years and which he’s now placed into the directorial hands of Robert Rodriguez. “My creativeness explodes around Robert, Edgar, James – insanely talented people who actually changed filmmaking. What I want to do in my career is curate amazing filmmakers, because being around that energy, it’s an adrenalin rush.” babydriver-movie.com
19