a tough tackler
At first glance, Kuno Becker’s shaven head, thuggish-looking facial expressions and his obvious overall fitness give the impression of a typical rugged football player.
In real life, however, Becker is better at coaxing music out of a violin rather than launching into two-footed tackles on a football pitch, having played the instrument since he was five and even furthering his violin studies in Austria at one point.
Nevertheless, the 27-year-old Mexican native decided that acting was in his genes (his grand-aunt María Felix was one of Mexico’s greatest actresses), and he began to study acting instead. He eventually made his name in Mexican TV series operas, and then crossed over to Hollywood, appearing in movies such as 2003’s Imagining Argentina and the Nomad before the role in Goal! came along.
So, what made him take the role of Santiago Munez, the footballing prodigy who travels to England to play for Newcastle United?
“I’d read the script, and immediately wanted to do the film. Football is something I don’t know how to do well, and gives me a chance to be someone that is not me,” he said. “It was a big challenge for me, but I love challenges. When I auditioned for the role, they liked me and asked me, ‘Do you play football?’’’
When we posed that exact same question to him, the answer was a very tentative, ‘yes’.
“Well, I used to play some football in school, but I was never very good at it,” he laughed.
That didn’t stop him from turning up at Newcastle for the football auditions though. In fact, so determined was he to get the role that he even broke his ankle while at it. “I had a stress fracture in my ankle as a result of all the training we did. We were training five to six hours a day, and I guess my body was just not used to it.”
At first, the director of the movie Danny Cannon told him to go home, but Becker had other ideas. “I was about to fly home, but then I thought, ‘I’m already here, I’ve travelled this far, I’ve trained so hard and even broke my ankle. Why give up now?’
“So I went back to Danny and challenged him to get the ball from me. He could only do it once out of five tries, and so I got the role!”
The role turned out to be the toughest physical thing he’d ever done.
“I’m not a player, so I’ve got to train harder than normal players do. I even broke my nose doing it. It was really tough, but we also really wanted to make the film look real.”
Nevertheless, Becker stressed that Goal! is not just about realistic-looking football scenes. “It’s a football movie, and not just another football match you can see on the TV,” he said. “It’s important that people like the movie because of the story, and not just because of the football.”
“We were actually quite worried about the response from the British audiences, because they want to see good football. Thankfully, the response from the focus groups was great. I was even thinking to myself, ‘This is going to be a great film that people are going to watch!’’’
Becker is currently in the midst of filming the second film – Goal! 2, in which his character, along with Alessandro Nivola’s Gavin Harris gets transferred to Real Madrid.
“The films are about how this simple guy from Los Angeles deals with all the fame and all (that comes with being a professional player). Fame as a football player is the same as that of a rock star, I think. An actor doesn’t have 50,000 people watching you and cheering you on. Footballers can get the feedback from the fans right there and then, and I think it’s awesome.”
Getting in touch with fervent football fans has been an eye-opening experience for Becker.
“It’s interesting to see how football fans need to be part of a group, and support a certain team. It’s a way for them to let their passions run free, and for them to let out steam,” he said.
