My mother had me when she was 15. My father died before I was born. So my mother was a teenage widow, and she used herself as her greatest example so I wouldn't end up in her position.
Gabriel Luna
I've been playing American football since I was six years old. I was a captain of my high school team, playing strong safety.
I played soccer, recreationally, in college.
We seem, as a culture, to start to adhere to these antiheroes and have grown tired of the traditional, straight-up-and-down good guy.
In high school, the fastest I ever ran was like a 4.67; that's pretty fast. But then, I only weighed 168 pounds.
While American football is very structured and linear and static - where everyone lines up, and there's a burst, and it happens - soccer is like the cosmos. It's like constellations. It's bodies moving in space. It's a very spherical game.
I played small forward on the basketball team. I also ran the 300 hurdles.
I actually had a nickname as a player myself. When I played high school football in Texas, strong safety, they called me Choo Choo because they said I hit like a train.
The two most important things in my life were academics and sports. I had to do my schoolwork first.
Austin is almost a million people, but it still feels like a relatively small town. Everybody knows each other. Or at least everyone in the filmmaking community.
I've been an actor now since freshman year of college, so it's 11 or 12 years.
I'd work with soccer coordinators at Game Changing Films and have one or two combat training sessions with my stunt double, who's a wushu master.
Football shape is one thing, and then 'futbol' shape is a completely other thing. It's a whole other level of fitness that you have to work to maintain.
