It’s been more than 20 years since Spy Kids was released, and Carla Gugino is still surprised fans believed she was old enough to be a mom to tweens.
“It is so funny because I was 27,” Gugino, now 52, recalled to BuzzFeed on Tuesday, April 2, recalling when she started playing spy mom Ingrid Cortez in the first film. “It was a really beautiful kind of double-edged sword because I love that movie so much. And the whole experience was incredible, and the movies continue.”
The actress has nothing but “love” for her character, but looking back, she’s shocked at Ingrid’s story line. In the 2001 action movie, two kids use high-tech gadgets to save their OSS spy parents, who are taken by an evil man named Fegan Floop (Alan Cumming).
“It was funny because I was 10 years, at least, too young for the role,” Gugino explained. “Because I was a spy for 10 years and then somehow had children who were, like, 9 and 11. So it was physically totally impossible.”
When meeting with director Robert Rodriguez, Gugino said the pair discussed her age, and he put her worries at ease. (Ingrid’s children, Carmen and Juni, were played by Alexa PenaVega and Daryl Sabara, respectively.)
“He was like, ‘I feel like I’m looking for a mother for my kids,’” she recalled. “We were talking about it, and I had auditioned for him and he said, ‘I think if we do our job right, no one will ever question it.’ And it’s so funny, like you said, nobody did.”
Gugino noted that her past connection to movie husband Antonio Banderas, who portrayed Gregorio Cortez, helped her embody the role as well.
“Antonio Banderas and I had worked together on a movie called Miami Rhapsody that David Frankel directed, so we also had a little bit of a history,” she said. “Which was really nice to come into it that way.”
Gugino played Ingrid in Spy Kids, which grossed $112.7 million in the United States, and returned for the 2002 and 2003 sequels, Spy Kids 2: Island of Lost Dreams and Spy Kids 3: Game Over.
The franchise enlisted a new set of characters for 2011’s Spy Kids 4: All the Time in the World. PenaVega, now 35, did reprise her role as Carmen Cortez alongside Danny Trejo, who played Uncle Machete, in the first three movies.
Last year, Netflix released a new action movie pegged to the franchise called Spy Kids: Armageddon. The fresh take on the spy films starred Zachary Levi, Gina Rodriguez, Conner Esterson and Everly Carganilla.
