Mexican actress Kate del Castillo is now internationally famous for brokering an October Rolling Stone interview between actor Sean Penn and the drug kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman Loera, which was published on Jan. 9 -- the day after El Chapo was captured for a third time. But del Castillo was born into the kind of circumstances that seem to prime a person for fame and fortune.
She is the daughter of Eric del Castillo, a Mexican cinema legend, and she began acting when she was only five years old. In order to secure her place in the spotlight, though, she had to break away from the shadow of her murdered drug-smuggling boyfriend and become a drug kingpin in her own right.
Through those two stories -- one real, one fake -- del Castillo may have found kinship with the man who's been called the most powerful drug lord in history.
El Chapo had to break away from the shadow of his abusive father, who grew and sold opium when El Chapo was young but wasn't able to pull his family out of poverty. Eventually El Chapo started his own marijuana business, and the rest is narco history.
Meanwhile, Del Castillo became immersed in the drug lore that surrounded the series in which she starred, La Reina del Sur, or The Queen of the South. But del Castillo's role as Teresa Mendoza only began to meld with her real life in 2012, when she called out El Chapo on Twitter, asking him to "traffic" in "cures for diseases, in food for street children," and more.
El Chapo sent her flowers and, after he was briefly captured in 2014, the two began writing letters back and forth and sending messages on their Blackberries. El Chapo wanted del Castillo to produce a movie about his life, though those plans were eventually dropped.
But del Castillo's fame is evolving in other ways. One of the defining behaviors of del Castillo's character in The Queen of the South was her fondness for tequila, and the actress has parlayed that into her own tequila line, which also launched on Jan. 9 (good timing!).
HOY! El estreno exclusivo de TEQUILA @LouisJamesMusic ft. @LUPILLO8en @AlRojoVivo a las 4pm/3c @katedelcastillo pic.twitter.com/pXZpr2Y4LV— Universal Musica (@UniversalMusica) January 7, 2016
And though her starring role has ended, she may soon find more widespread fame as an actress as well. Del Castillo will play Mexico's first lady in a Spanish-language Netflix show called Ungovernable that will air in 2016.
del Castillo lives in Los Angeles and has found work on small screens and big screens in America with TV shows such as Weeds and Jane the Virgin, and movies such as The 33.
[img src="http://admin.mashable.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Castillo1-640x360.jpg" caption="Kate Del Castillo attends a press conference for "The 33." " credit="Rex Features" alt="Castillo"]
Whether brokering the Rolling Stone interview will land her more roles remains to be seen, but it has momentarily made her a household name.