Diplomacy's loss is acting's gain -- a talk with Edgar Ramirez

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Edgar Ramirez might have made a name for himself as a diplomat, but instead he's becoming internationally known as an actor on the rise."I think that the reason why I wanted to be a diplomat had a lot to do with (being) fascinated by human nature with all its flaws and all its virtues," says Ramirez, a Venezuelan who grew up in several different countries thanks to his father's position as a military attache."At the end of the day, as an actor, I'm doing the same thing. I'm exploring human nature, the human condition, but probably from a more poetic point of view."Ramirez, 30, co-stars with Dennis Quaid, Forest Whitaker and Matthew Fox in "Vantage Point." The thriller uses several points of view to tell the story of an assassination attempt on the U.S. president (William Hurt) as he visits Spain for an anti-terror summit.Ramirez, who played Keira Knightley's tough-guy love interest in "Domino" and an assassin tracking Matt Damon in "The Bourne Ultimatum," liked the way "Vantage Point" was constructed."The movie invites the audience to complete the information," Ramirez says by phone from Los Angeles. "It's very interactive. You cannot be just passive in front of the screen."He says he received the script for "Vantage Point" after doing "Domino" and "clicked" with British director Pete Travis. After about a year of pre-production, the film was ready to go, and Ramirez joined the rest of the cast and crew in Mexico.Ramirez, who speaks Spanish, English, French, Italian and German, says the main set was an "amazing" reproduction of the Plaza Mayor in Salamanca."I've been to Salamanca, and the replica that they built in Mexico City was really astonishing," he says, crediting production designer Brigitte Broch. "Looking at the walls, just from inches, you could not tell the difference."Although the filmmakers originally hoped to shoot in Spain, the demands of the production -- which included a bomb explosion -- made it impossible."I don't see the mayor of Salamanca letting the plaza be blown away," Ramirez says, chuckling. "It's been there for quite a long time, and I think the people in Salamanca feel a certain appreciation for the Plaza Mayor."Ramirez, who earned his college degree in political journalism, appreciates the film's message about accepting other perspectives."I think the movie talks about the concept of the truth and all the different angles that contribute to the truth," he says. "I think that there's a tendency around the world to believe that the only valued angle to the truth is the one we hold, and we're blind, reluctant to accept the existence of other points of view."Before concentrating full time on acting, Ramirez headed a Rock the Vote-type organization in Venezuela. He's a spokesman for Amnesty International in his country and is involved in the group's campaign against gun proliferation there. He's also a spokesman for the breast-cancer organization in Venezuela."Now that my career is established in Latin America and that it's taking off in the U.S. on a more international level, there are a lot of things (I) can do to help and to get involved in social causes that need certain attention," he says.His next film is "Cyrano Fernandez," a Venezuelan version of "Cyrano de Bergerac," while "The Argentine," directed by Steven Soderbergh and starring Benicio del Toro, will be released in the fall. Ramirez is doing well for someone who started acting in student films as a favor for a friend."Toward the end of my college days, I met this Mexican professor who was a juror at a movie festival that we had in my campus, and he got the chance to see a short film that I had starred in," recalls Ramirez. "That short film got a lot of attention at the festival, and he saw it, and he offered me the opportunity to be in a movie he was producing in Mexico."But at the end, I couldn't go to Mexico. ... So three years later I was already working on politics in my country, and this guy came back to Venezuela, but he was not coming from Mexico; he was coming from Cannes. And the movie he had offered me was 'Amores Perros.' "(Contact Betsy Pickle of The Knoxville News Sentinel in Tennessee at www.knoxnews.com.)