Carla Gugino claims ‘Spy Kids’ role was “impossible”
The actor Carla Gugino has discussed her role in the 2001 Robert Rodriguez family action film Spy Kids, claiming that she found it “physically impossible.”
Gugino was just 27 years old when she starred in the role of Ingrid Cortes, the mother of two child spies. However, after totting up the calculations, Gugino believes her and Ingrid Cortes’ ages didn’t match up.
In a new interview with Buzzfeed, the actor said, “It is so funny because I was 27. It was a really beautiful kind of double-edged sword because I love that movie so much. And the whole experience was incredible, and the movies continue.”
According to Gugino, she truly loved her character but found that she was “at least 10 years too young” for the role. “I was a spy for 10 years and then somehow had children who were like 9 and 11. So it was physically totally impossible,” she confessed.
The main Spy Kids cast was completed by Danny Trejo, Antonio Banderas, Alexa PenaVega and Daryl Sabara, with Gugino explaining that the film had already been in production for two weeks by the time Rodriguez cast her.
Explaining the meeting with the director, Gugino said, “He was like, ‘I feel like I’m looking for a mother for my kids.’ We were talking about it, and I had auditioned for him and he said, ‘I think if we do our job right, no one will ever question it.'”
Although Gugino’s young age threw a potential spanner in the works for her to get the role, she believes “nobody” who watched the film was bothered by the matter.
Gugino added, “Antonio Banderas and I had worked together on a movie called Miami Rhapsody that David Frankel directed, so we also had a little bit of a history, which was really nice to come into it that way.”
Following the first Spy Kids movie, which grossed a massive $150 million from a budget of around $35 million, a franchise was quickly put together. The main cast and Rodriguez all returned for 2002’s Spy Kids 2: The Island of Lost Dreams and Spy Kids 3D: Game Over. The director had found a new cast for the franchise’s reboot, comprised of 2011’s Spy Kids: All the Time in the World and 2023’s Spy Kids: Armageddon.
Never Miss A Scene
The Far Out Film Newsletter
All the latest film news from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.