Kate del Castillo: Multifaceted Actress, Businesswoman, and Activist Remains a Force on Screen and Beyond

Currently, the Mexican actress, businesswoman and activist Kate de Castillo remains in force on the screen as the protagonist and also as one of the producers of the series “Volver a caer” from the streaming service ViX +, an adaptation of the novel by León Tolstoy “Anna Karenina”, which took place at the end of the 19th century and which has been adapted to a present environment to show the story of Ana Montes de Oca, a lady who, like the protagonist of the original Russian version, belongs to to high society, but who, in this case, is a former Olympic swimming champion who is married to a sports executive played by the Spanish actor Maxi Iglesias.

This work on the screen through the platform that is part of the TelevisaUnivision conglomerate is just one of the many projects in which the multifaceted actress is in constant contact with her audience in the United States, Mexico and the rest of Latin America.

Likewise, Del Castillo also comes from interpreting Teresa Mendoza for the third time, the emblematic empowered character who catapulted her and who turned her acting career into a “watershed”, like herself. He has confirmed this to us on multiple occasions.

It was precisely as a result of this production that actress Kate del Castillo was invited in 2016 to participate in the forum entitled “From pink novels to bullets” in which she shared with Angélica María and Tommy Calleas moderator at the time of the Hoy Los Angeles publication as part of the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books.

Seven years later, the Mexican celebrity returns to the Spanish-language stage of this festival that is held every year at the facilities of the University of Southern California (USC) and that this time he did it together with his colleague and partner Jessica Maldonado.

At 2:10 pm this Sunday, the prominent actress from productions such as “Ingobernable” and the Hollywood blockbuster “Bad Boys for Life” took the Los Angeles Times en Español stage to show the public, with the best of her smiles , that face that separates her from her characters and that gives way to the businesswoman and immigrant woman who came to this city 20 years ago full of dreams and expectations to start from scratch. “Very happy to be here and I love seeing so many people at these kinds of festivals,” was the first thing the actress said as she stood in front of the audience that adores her so much.

“Usually you leave (from your country) when you have nothing to lose. I left when he had everything to lose. So I came to this country to start from scratch. A career that for me has been everything I have known in my life through my father and the only thing the whole family has eaten, ”said she, the daughter of the great Mexican actor Eric del Castillo.

Leaving the comfort in which she lived personally and professionally in Mexico was a real challenge for Kate. “It was very hard, but also very rich because the taste of things that are hard for you always tastes better,” she mischievously confessed from the stage.

During this meeting, Jessica Maldonada mentioned the very truth, and that is that people always see the successes of the artists, but they do not see the battles that these figures undergo from the doors to the inside. The same thing happens to people who see Kate on screen. Immigrants who decided one day to leave everything to try their luck on the other side of the border and that is why they identify with the experience that Kate lived when she arrived as an immigrant in this country. “It’s already sad to have to leave one’s country to go looking for new opportunities,” Kate said immediately.

“I would have wanted my country to have the opportunities that were given to me here and it is not that I was bad in Mexico. I simply had other needs as an actress, as an artist. I was also going through a difficult situation of a very embarrassing divorce at that time for me and all the press was all over me. There was also a divorce between cinema and television. So I wanted to make movies, but at that time the movies weren’t pretty in Mexico, it was file movies and what we had left was to make soap operas and not to detract from soap operas, I have a lot of affection and gratitude for everything I learned from do them, but I got bored very quickly because I started starring very quickly and there was nowhere to move as an actress,” said the star of soap operas like “Muchachitas” and “Ramona.”

As Maldonado mentioned on stage “life is for taking risks” and we know that Kate has taken the tough ones. Of that there is no doubt. “You have to take risks and now that we are at a book festival, I remind you that I started writing many years ago without being a writer. You don’t have to be a writer to write and now that I’m going back to writing, I start to see that I have papers from years ago, nonsense that one writes and right now that I’ve been fixing things in my house I’m seeing them, ”said the author of the book “Yours”.

View of some of the panelists who participated in the second Sunday day of the 2023 edition of the Los Angeles Times Liabros Festival.

(Tommy Calle)

Through this book precisely, Kate was able to get out of her bowels those things that made her better known and those experiences also reached the soul of many readers who identified with her story. “And then I have received many emails from women who tell me ‘thanks to your book I left this person who abused me’, ‘thanks to your book I opened my eyes and saw that light at the end of the tunnel’. Imagine, if only one person has read it and helped him, for me that is already a profit, “said the actress with much gratitude.

Beyond her facet as an actress, Kate is a faithful activist who defends human rights and is also a spokesperson for the organization PETA for its acronym in English “People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals” (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals). to give animals a voice, in addition to other initiatives that touch her heart, but that, always involved in projects that she knows how to choose very well.

“And if you don’t do it that way, you lose credibility, I think that if it has nothing to do with you (better not think about it) because to help, I would love to help a lot of causes, but I feel that one as an actor, that we have that voice, it is almost an obligation to use it for good and the only way to do it is to do it in a real way, from the heart, in something that really hurts you. Animals hurt me, I love them because they have no voice. I had my dog, may she rest in peace, Lola, and that is why I am familiar with animals, ”she said convinced.

In addition to being involved in this noble cause, Kate has also known how to surround herself with the right people to excel in the business world. Today, in addition to her Tequila ‘Honor’ brand, the Mexican businesswoman also has a line of casual clothing and will soon be launching a makeup line with Korean technology and for this she is already testing countless products to get involved in one that really fills your expectations and know that it is the right product to carry your name and the one that your audience deserves.

But in the midst of all this sea of ​​projects and ventures, one of the ones that she enjoys the most at this moment and of which she feels very proud is her production company “Cholawood”.

Kate del Castillo shared with Jessica Maldonado many of the secrets that have helped her achieve success in her different professional facets.

(Tommy Calle)

And it is that when this company arose, Kate was in a moment of labor drought. All of this when she was inevitably facing the aftermath of her controversial encounter with drug lord Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán Loera and persecution by the Mexican attorney general’s office for wanting to question her.

It was at that precise moment that Cholawood, the production company that Del Castillo founded in 2018 together with the Mexican journalist Jessica Maldonado and the producer Carmen Cervantes, when the Mexican celebrity began to resume his course. At that time, her papers and projects were not reaching her for fear of the producers wanting to hire her. The job instability and the expenses that she had to assume for her legal representation were so great that Kate was about to sell her property in Los Angeles to be able to face him.

However, Cholawood was a blessing for her and her partners because after creating it, opportunities began to arise. The first was the series “Ingobernable” which was set in Mexico, but she had to record it outside the neighboring country because she could not work there due to the persecution she had against her.

However, Kate knew how to get up and from there the opportunities began to arrive, but for this, Kate had to work twice as hard because nothing falls from the sky. Today Cholawood keeps her quite busy working in her office or from her home on her computer. And it is that now that is giving her the peace of mind of knowing that she does not have to wait for the characters that she would like to interpret or produce at a high level. Many times the businessmen here are not representing Hispanics well or as they deserve in this country, where we are stereotyped, says Kate.

‘I got tired of the fact that the roles they offer me are either prostitutes or women who clean houses, that there is nothing wrong with that, because I have done them, I am an actress, what happens is that I don’t like it when I do it they do because of stereotypes or that they offer them out of ignorance. I wish there would be more of these book festivals and people in the industry start reading so that they become educated and understand who we are and know our full spectrum of colors, because we are not just that. For that reason, I opened my company, along with Carmen Serrano and Jessica, the three cholas, because I got tired of explaining to them that Mexicans are not like that or that Latinos are not like that, because we are constantly being sexualized,” said the actress from 50 years old.

In closing, Kate explained how important reading is. In her case, she began to read books from a very young age, since her father gave her acting books to read and through them Kate was able to travel and get to know the world and people without leaving her home, only through reading. .

“And now you don’t need to have money to be able to travel. With a good book you can go wherever you want, it’s culture. Now the journey of the poor is books. For me reading has given me absolutely everything, it opens your mind, it makes you know that you do not have a single truth, that you are not unique in your thinking, there are so many ranges of colors all over. Books have completely changed my life, even when I’ve been sad or happy, they change you depending on which books you read, but reading and also writing help your life a lot. Write, it’s not that difficult, ”said the actress who today claims to go ahead without setting goals.

“I don’t think I ever set goals, it seems to me that I was very conflicted about setting goals and because it made me nervous. I better continue living my life trying to do the best that I can and as long as it is from the heart and really fills me … I will move on ”, she concluded.