‘Spy Kids’

Everett Collection

Carla Gugino said she is still trying to figure out how she was cast as a mother of two school-aged children at 27 years old in the original Spy Kids movie.

During a recent interview with BuzzFeed, the actress, who played Ingrid Cortes, looked back at her time filming the 2001 movie, alongside Antonio Banderas, Alexa PenaVega and Daryl Sabara. The action-adventure film, directed by Robert Rodriguez, followed a family of spies.

“It is so funny because I was 27,” Gugino recounted. “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 Girls on the Bus star continued, “I love Ingrid Cortes. But it was funny because I was 10 years, at least, too young for the role because I was a spy for 10 years and then somehow had children who were like 9 and 11,” adding with a laugh, “So it was physically totally impossible.”

Gugino noted that Rodriguez had already begun filming the original movie for two weeks before she met with the filmmaker about being potentially cast.

“He was like, ‘I feel like I’m looking for a mother for my kids.’ 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,’” the Watchmen actress said, referring to being younger for the role.

She added, “And it’s so funny like you said, nobody did. 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, which was really nice to come into it that way.”

Gugino reprised her role in two Spy Kids sequels, released in 2002 and 2003. However, 2011’s Spy Kids: All the Time in the World featured an all-new cast, as well as 2023’s Spy Kids: Armageddon.