Fernando Colunga

In 1988 Fernando Colunga was racing down the asphalt on a motorcycle at full speed. His face never appeared in a close shot. He worked as a stunt double for Eduardo Yáñez in the telenovela Dulce desafío, getting paid per blow taken, and nobody on set suspected that this burly guy would end up dominating Spanish-language television for three decades.

He had left civil engineering school, a hardware store business, and several nightclub bars behind in Mexico City. From the nightlife he learned to hate alcohol, and he remained a strict teetotaler throughout his entire professional career.

It was time to make the leap into the spotlight.

In 1990 he enrolled at Televisa's Center for Artistic Education and started at the very bottom. He appeared in episodes of La telaraña and lent his body to the puppet Chabelo on the children's show Plaza Sésamo. Nobody handed him a close-up.

The Stuntman Who Didn't Want Doubles

His real breakthrough came in 1995 with María la del Barrio. He was paired with Thalía, and the melodrama reached ratings of 60 percent in dozens of countries.

And the formula was repeated almost by heart. Esmeralda arrived in 1997 alongside Leticia Calderón, and a year later came La usurpadora, where his character Carlos Daniel Bracho built an relentless presence in front of the camera.

Colunga never played fragile or hesitant leading men. His characters were upright figures with severe diction and tense jaws who drew millions of viewers to prime time.

That shook international ratings.

But the professional turning point came through producer Carla Estrada. With Amor Real in 2003, he broke away from traditional, cheap-looking melodrama thanks to a recreation of the 19th century that topped 35 ratings points in the Hispanic market.

He repeated the period-drama format with Alborada in 2005 and with Pasión in 2007. During that cycle, Colunga imposed a spartan discipline: he read the complete scripts before stepping onto the set, memorized his scene partners' lines, and never accepted a delay in filming calls.

The Criminal Clan and the Comeback Stumble

In 2015 the actor decided to break away from the routine of melodramas after filming Pasión y poder. He settled in Miami and built an impenetrable wall around his privacy, with no official social media accounts and no statements to the gossip press.

Nobody knew anything about his private life.

The silence ended in 2022 when he accepted the role of Aquiles Greco in the miniseries El secreto de la familia Greco for streaming platforms. He played a cold, decrepit kidnapper, a criminal inspired by the real-life Puccio family case in Argentina. It meant trading tailored suits for facial prosthetics, damaged teeth and a fake hunchback.

That comeback won over critics and earned him a nomination at the Premios Produ in 2023.

But broadcast television had a bitter setback in store for him. In 2023 he returned to Televisa's studios to lead a new adaptation of El maleficio, taking on the role of Enrique de Martino.

Viewers rejected the excessive use of digital technology and the scattered tone of the story. The show averaged only 2.1 million viewers in its final stretch and suffered drastic editing cuts before going off the air in March 2024.