THE BECKER BUGLE

Becker plays young soccer virtuoso Santiago Munez in this unashamedly feel-good fairytale about a Mexican who gets a shot at the big time in the UK premier league. An illegal immigrant who works with his father tending rich people's gardens, Santiago loves soccer and plays with his local East LA team at every opportunity. One day former club player Glen Foy (Dillane), who's attending his grandson's match nearby, spots Santiago in action and recognises instantly that the boy is a natural, and that, with a bit of guidance and some luck, he could make it as a professional.

Foy calls in a favour and Santiago travels a long way around the world to follow his dreams. Even so, there are many obstacles to overcome along the way - not the least being the prospect of actually making it in the big league, and everything that comes along with it.

The young actor, already well established with Mexican TV audiences but otherwise an unknown, being given a chance at a big leg-up, Becker says it's not hard to draw a parallel between his career path and Santiago's. "I relate to the character in many ways: we all have dreams; I have my dreams - which are to be a part of good stories, and to keep working as an actor, playing interesting characters; and Santiago has his dream of becoming a soccer star. So yeah, I definitely relate to him in many ways, and the great thing is I think that a lot of people in the audience are gonna relate to the character too, you know? But it is a fairytale; it's a feel-good movie, but it's also a lot of fun; it's not too complex."

Kuno Becker likes to point out that being a movie star isn't always that glamorous a profession, when you have to shoot for days on end in a freezing cold puddle of mud. "It was rainy, it was miserable, it was cold. It was so tough, it was very physical; I had to like fall in the mud 12 times, every half an hour; so it was pretty bad, but you know what? It was worth it, because it looks amazing on the screen; it looks real." Becker laughingly confirms an assistant producer's observation that grown men were seen to be in tears during that particular week or so of shooting. "Yeah I know; I broke my nose in one of those scenes, I broke my ankles during the training - but it was worth it, because I wanted the challenge of playing the part, but physically it was the hardest thing I've ever done."

Becker goes on to point out that the brutal tackles his character receives look very real on screen because they were real. "Actually we didn't rehearse a lot of those tackles, and that's why we had a couple of accidents; but it's real, looks real, but sometimes you got to be careful with that," he adds, diplomatically, noting that some of the footballers had a tendency to be a little too enthusiastic, "because if somebody gets injured then, you know, we got to stop shooting the film. We took the risk, and everything was sort of OK - it worked, but, most of the time it's better to be a bit more cautious," says Becker, before exploding into another outburst of good-natured laughter.

Besides getting to meet David Beckam (onscreen and off) Kuno Becker cites the experience of working with real-life football stars in some scenes as a big help - not just for his performance, but also for the degree of reality their presence confers up on the film itself. "It was great, because first of all they were very nice to us, and it makes the story a lot stronger to have the real players in the film. I trained for about four months, before we shot the film, five, six, seven - even eight hours a day, it was pretty tough. I broke both of my ankles; I had a stress fracture and couldn't walk for about two months."

To add to the realism, many of the matches that take place in the film were actually shot at the real locations. Becker says he definitely felt as though he was walking on sacred turf. "It was great to see how it feels to run onto that pitch, with thousands of people cheering at you, or the team, you know. It was a lot of fun, too, as an actor, deciding what this guy - who's basically a gardener from another country, you know - is gonna do, how he's gonna react, once he discovers fame, and starts getting all this money and chicks and stuff."

Becker is also at pains to point out that, while a lot of football matches are covered during the course of the film, "The great thing is that the action scenes, the football matches, every one of them has a lot to do with the story. Danny Cannon did a great job, putting it all together, with the music and everything. He's a big soccer fan too, pretty crazy, you know, shouting from the sidelines - but he doesn't play much; he's really bad!"