Rodrigo Santoro (Petrópolis, 1975) spent his childhood dreaming of being a doctor until, on the way to his university entrance exam, a traffic accident in Rio de Janeiro killed his vocation. And he tried journalism. At that stage, a friend took him to a casting for a telenovela on the Brazilian chain Globo and “la chat” ended up defeating reporting.

But he bet because it was going to be his. He carved out a career as a soap opera heartthrob and movie star in his country until 2003’s Love Actually put him in Hollywood and his role as King Xerxes in 300 launched him into stardom. “What I learned in this profession is that when you’re working, you’re living. Projection, earning money and being looked at are fine, but what stays are the experiences. When you die, you won’t remember your car or of a prize that you have won, if not of what you have lived with your people, your family, your loves…”

The last one he has met is Ferdinand Magellan, whose character he plays in Limitless, the series about the first trip around the world that Prime Video has just released. “They called me just three weeks before the first lockout of the pandemic and I ended up spending it with my family and the ghost of Magellan. I have never had so much time for research, I saw many debates, I studied a lot of history and the historian Vanesa de Cruz got me his will. That’s where my obsessive point came from.”

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