Catalina Sandino is a Colombian actress. She shared the Silver Bear with Charlize Theron and received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her role in Maria Full of Grace (2004). Sandino Moreno was born 19 April 1981 in Bogotá, Colombia. She grew up in a middle-class family, her father is a vet and her mother a pathologist. She attended Saint George's School in Bogotá, Colombia. Before becoming an actress, she studied advertising at Pontificia Universidad Javeriana in Bogota. n 2003, casting calls for Maria Full of Grace were conducted in both New York and Colombia where she was initially noticed for her talent at the acting school in Bogotá. She was then referred to a casting audition where she beat over 900 girls for the lead role. She left the college to begin her first movie project. Starring Sandino Moreno as María Alvarez, a Colombian girl who works in a flower plantation when she was pregnant and then as a drug mule. Sandino Moreno's role in this movie was acclaimed, receiving positive critics form different websites and film critic's sites. This performance made her the first Colombian, the second South American, and third Hispanic actress nominated for an Academy Award. She was the first person born in the 1980s to have received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. Also, she won the Silver Bear at Berlin International Film Festival shared with Charlize Theron and received a nomination to Screen Actors Guild Award. In 2005, she moved to New York City to study dramatic arts and for continue with her success career at the moment, and was invited to join AMPAS. In 2006, she played roles in independent film Fast Food Nation with Patricia Arquette, and Paris, je t'aime, where she starred as a young immigrant mother in the segment "Loin du 16e". In 2007, she starred Hildebranda Sánchez in Love in the Time of Cholera, based in novel of the same name by Gabriel García Márquez, where she appeared alongside Javier Bardem and Fernanda Montenegro. In 2008, she appeared alongside Benicio del Toro in Steven Soderbergh's Che, playing the role of Aleida March de Guevara, the second wife of Ernesto "Che" Guevara. This film was acclaimed by the critics. She was in the premiere in 2008 Cannes Film Festival. In 2010, she played the role of female Vampire Maria in The Twilight Saga: Eclipse, based on the novel of the same name by Stephenie Meyer. In 2016 she starred in the TV series American Gothic as a recurring character, Christina Morales. In the same year, she returned to the world of cinema in Custody, where she appeared alongside Viola Davis. The film was premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival.

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