Charting a Course for TV Fame

MEXICO CITY —  The peasant costume of coarse brown fabric and flared skirt was designed to give Amor Huerta an innocent look, but nothing could conceal the 7-year-old’s ambition.

“I want to be a very famous actress,” Amor said, batting her eyelashes. She’ll probably get her wish. As a graduate of Centro de Educacion Artistica, Amor is already on the inside track to global fame.

For 23 years, CEA has reigned as the most significant feeder in the world for the wildly popular serial melodramas called telenovelas.

There’s nothing make-believe about the importance of telenovelas for Televisa, the biggest media corporation here, which produced 48 of the 50 most-watched television programs in Mexico last year. Programming brought Televisa more than $510 million in profits last year.

Televisa, which owns CEA, produces the majority of the world’s telenovelas, and exports them to 130 countries. The number of viewers on this planet who have watched a CEA-trained heroine snag herself a wealthy hero ranges into the billions, with Televisa shows among the most watched in virtually all those countries.

“Ten of 20 who graduate [from CEA] will be in telenovelas ,” said CEA director Eugenio Cobo. “Three or four will be stars.” In a more modest scenario, CEA graduates are nearly ensured that they can survive as working actors, which is no small feat in a country where millions of Mexicans head to the United States each year in search of work.

It may make acting purists cringe, but training for a career on the small screen is a wise investment in Mexico. Last year, Mexico’s film academy helped fund a total of 18 films. In the first six months of this year, they gave money to only four, and none of them have been released yet. (During that same period, U.S. moviegoers could choose from more than 200 feature-length films.)

By contrast, Televisa produces 20 telenovelas each year, with episodes running five times a week for about three to four months. Cobo calculates that 4,500 roles were cast last year.

“In the United States, the real actors go into film. But here, in Mexico, the film industry is far behind the television industry,” said producer Christian Bach, who left Televisa several years ago to do theater before she began working at TV Azteca, a smaller rival network launched in 1993. “There’s not enough money for films. The best options are theater and television.”

But theater doesn’t pay, and on Mexican television, sitcoms don’t exist. Without CEA helping actors land roles on telenovelas , it can be difficult for actors here to pay the bills and nearly impossible to achieve any level of stardom.

“CEA is very concentrated on making stars for their business,” said Patricia Reyes Spindola, one of Mexico’s most revered stage, television and film actresses. “And their business is television.”

Indeed Reyes advises her students: “My husband is television, and my lover is film.”

Tight security surrounds Televisa’s huge 16-studio lot, shutting out the realities of taxicab carjackings and kidnappings in this smoggy capital city. Inside the compound, crew members rush by deliverymen who stare at actresses in full makeup and hair rollers. CEA occupies two floors of a metal and glass building that rises above the lot.

Each year, CEA holds nationwide cattle calls, drawing a total of about 5,000 hopeful actors across Mexico. In the first elimination round, CEA recruiters will throw out 3,500. A subsequent round of paperwork, interviews and screen tests will knock another couple of hundred off the pile. In the end, CEA admits 45 students, almost all of whom are light-skinned. About half of the students will drop out or flunk out before graduation.

Being a CEA student is a full-time job, with assignments to practice skills that are rarely seen on telenovelas.

In a studio off to the left, an actress stood before a mirror practicing her dance technique. Across the hall, a jittery cast prepared for its in-house production of Moliere’s “Wise Women.” In Vocalization Room No. 2, a young man belted out scales while his teacher’s hands glided over the ivories.

The 16-to 22-year-olds take courses 45 hours a week, with an hour lunch break. Students live at home, and CEA “tuition” is free. In their second year, CEA students get a food allowance of about $300 a month. Along with courses in body movements, diction and projection, students must complete a course in tai chi, which Cobo says helps them release tension.

Twelve percent of the CEA graduating class consists of foreigners, like Masha Kostiurina, a blue-eyed, blond Russian with alabaster skin whose family has lived in Mexico since she was 7.

The entire telenovela system, from entry into CEA to casting, favors light-skinned actors. In a book published last year about Televisa’s founder, Emilio Azcarraga, the mogul was quoted as saying he preferred “two channels for whites and two for dark-skinned people.” The book’s authors, Claudia Fernandez and Andrew Paxman, went on to say in “El Tigre; Emilio Azcarraga y su imperio Televisa” that Azcarraga “perpetuated the division of classes in an indirect manner, through his condescending style of programming.”

The telenovelas are based on characters that look European, and Cobo shrugged when he said he could not recall one telenovel a that starred an actor who had features that are considered more traditional to Mexico’s indigenous population.

London-trained actress Angelica Aragon, one of the country’s best-known stars, was cast by Televisa producers to play a Mexican woman in two back-to-back telenovelas 10 years ago. She still maintains that they should have given the part to another actress.

“My eyes are green, and I didn’t think I could be taken for an indigenous woman,” she said.

There are other resources for actors outside of CEA, like TV Azteca’s telenovela school and private workshops, such as the one Reyes runs. But nothing can compare to the machine CEA has access to.

Critics say CEA is not an acting school as much as it is a finishing school for stars who need to acquire skills specific to telenovelas. Cobo said CEA students must learn to remain cool while wearing an apuntador --the actor’s earpiece into which crew members whisper their lines and stage directions. The apuntador enables actors to fly through pages of script each day, since there are no lines to memorize.

They learn how to move around a set crowded with five different cameras, and how to position themselves for the best close-up shot. And, when that camera comes near, CEA students have different methods for crying on cue. One graduate said he was told to look at the light until his eyes welled up. Cobo said some actors rely on a smear of Vicks VapoRub under their eyes to begin the process. In terms of kissing, Cobo says there are certain iron-clad rules.

“Look, we have to teach them not to kiss with their tongue,” Cobo said. “We had a student who got very mad about it.” For an aspiring actor, dealing with CEA makes good business sense. A relationship with CEA is the most efficient way to enter the pipeline of Televisa’s massive production arm, with its programs beamed into millions of homes. Televisa has a deal with Univision, the largest Spanish-language broadcaster in the United States, which is viewed by more than 80% of the Spanish-language television audience. According to the exclusive arrangement, Univision cannot show any foreign product other than Televisa programs through 2017.

“Televisa is the Hollywood of Latin America, and they do very well in the non-Mexican market,” said Mario Rodriguez, president of Univision Entertainment. Univision’s entire prime-time lineup consists of Televisa telenovelas , and the series are consistently ranked among the most popular among viewers by Nielsen.

Producers who populate the Televisa telenovela machine call him every day to see which of the CEA graduates might be good for a role.

“There is not much need for them to look elsewhere,” Cobo smiled, as he pulled out a photo album of CEA alums that Televisa producers peruse when they begin casting. Many of the meetings between “auditioning” graduates and producers are held inside Cobo’s comfortable office at CEA.

Russian-born Kostiurina graduated from CEA in 1998 when she was only 20 and immediately landed a six-month gig on Televisa’s telenovela “Gente Bien” (Good People). But that was just one gig.

“Six months passed, and I didn’t have any television work, so I went to Argentina to act in a telenovela for TV Azteca for six months.”

TV Azteca was good to her, even when she returned to Mexico. In 1999, Kostiurina appeared in the network’s telenovela “Besos Prohibidos” (Forbidden Kisses). But she said Televisa would not do business with her.

“I sort of betrayed Televisa by working for the competition,” she said, echoing the well-known sentiment among actors and producers who fall out of favor with Televisa. “I can’t work for them again.”

Kostiurina has spent four years at other acting workshops, and most recently landed a four-day job as an extra on “Frida,” a Miramax film starring Salma Hayek. The love story is in English, and it follows Mexican painter Frida Kahlo and her husband, the great muralist Diego Rivera. Kostiurina was cast as one of his paramours. She has no lines, but she got to work on one of the few functioning movie sets in Mexico. She insisted she won’t give up her dream to be a star, the very dream that CEA cultivated.

“I will keep working as an actress, and now I’m studying cinematography,” she said. CEA, for her, was a starting point, but she learned her technique at a small acting school run by Reyes.

Reyes is keenly aware of industry politics. She continues to teach a few courses at CEA, while running her own independent acting school and casting agency. Reyes sees herself as an option for the 10 or so graduates of CEA who don’t get onto telenovela casts each year.

But Televisa has recently empowered CEA with even more influence on what viewers see when they turn on their television sets. Several years ago, Televisa executives decided to extend their reach and strengthen their grasp by going after very young viewers. CEA was the first part of that plan. In 1996, CEA Infantil opened for children ages 4 to 10, letting them pursue their acting dreams for about one hour a day in the afternoon.

“They learn melodrama,” Cobo said, making it clear that Televisa’s future lies with actors who learn to emote at nearly the same age they learn to read. With a stable of young actors in the CEA system, Televisa began producing children’s telenovelas in 1998. The shows air after school or in the very early evening, and executives say the afternoon time slot has already reached 3 million of Mexico’s estimated 20 million homes.

Seven-year-old Amor was cast in “Aventuras en el Tiempo” (Adventures in Time), which follows a group of children who have access to a time machine. Of the three children’s telenovelas that spawned soundtracks, two--including this one--were nominated for Latin Grammy Awards.

Cobo sees a bright future for Amor. With a feature film under her belt and three telenovela roles to her credit, Amor is understandably eager to remain in Cobo’s good graces. On a recent school day, she came to CEA dressed as Gretel for the upcoming independent production of a musical version of “Hansel and Gretel.” She waited patiently for Cobo to emerge from a meeting and then, as her mother looked on from the bank of elevators, she handed him the invitation and unfurled a smile that was perfect for a close-up.