Catalina, the Latin American icon-of-the-month for being the first Colombian ever nominated for an Oscar, studied in a British school in Bogota, Colombia.

There, she took acting classes at a theatre before being chanced upon by an anonymous benefactor who referred her name to the casting agent for Joshua Marston's Maria Full Of Grace.

She moved to New York around 2003, where she lives with lighting technician David Elwell. Catalina wistfully reads Spanish books just because she sorely misses the sound of the language back home in Colombia. Not expecting anything, she was overwhelmed to hear on television about her Best Actress nomination!

The intense performance sees Catalina play 17-year-old Maria, whose life in a Colombian flower sweatshop is ruinous. And getting worse. So, when she's asked to ingest heroin pellets and fly to New York, the escape sounds like a dream to her. The dream sours soon enough, and the film is a catalogue of the torment she goes through. Her acting, as an intestinal drug courier, is mindblowing.

In her own words: 'I was coming from Spain and I was going through customs and gave them my passport to stamp. These two guys were like: "You're the girl from Maria! Can I take my picture with you?" I was like: "Yeah! Of course! But can I take a picture with you?" It was awesome. A year before, the customs were the ones stopping me and causing me a headache. So I took a picture of him with me because I know that Josh [Marston, her director] wouldn't believe me.'

Catalina, life is never going to be the same. Good luck.