María Gabriela de Faría is gearing up for the biggest movie of her career. The Venezuelan actress is starring in "Superman," where she plays one of the film's villains. As The Engineer, de Faría plays an alien and one of Lex Luthor's (Nicholas Hoult) minions. From what we've seen in trailers, she's a vicious and brutal fighter, capable of taking on the Man of Steel, unlike humans on Earth. Still, there are layers to her character.
de Faría was recently featured on Coy Jandreu's podcast, talking about her character and her career. "He wanted this character to be really serious, poker face," said de Faría of James Gunn, the film's writer and director. "Oh, sh*t happens to her. She feels a lot. She's very emotional, and I think that's the Telenovela in me," said de Faría with a laugh.
She also revealed that working on a serialized format like telenovelas has granted her with great skills that were useful to the world of 'Superman' and to her presence on set overall.
"When you do telenovelas, you never know what's happening next. They give you episodes probably the day of."
"With comic books, it's kind of the same. The character lives many lives depending on what version is that."
The perks of shooting telenovelas as a young actor
de Faría also shocked the hosts by how working on a telenovela set prepares you for learning lines fast and developing a strong stamina as an actor.
"For telenovelas, we do like 40 scenes a day. It's insane," she said. "So it gives me the workhorse kind of thing where I can totally do this a thousand times. I can learn my lines like this," she said with a snap of her fingers.
"It gives you a great work ethic."
"Superman" premieres this July 11th, only in theaters.