Catalina Sandino Moreno believes she has a guardian angel. As a rule, I tend to walk away quickly from people who tell me such things, but Moreno, 26, has a stronger case than most.

Indeed, with an Oscar nomination for best actress for her first film, Maria Full of Grace (2004), and four hotly anticipated films coming out in the next year - including Richard Linklater's controversial Fast Food Nation, Ethan Hawke's The Hottest State, and Mike Newell's adaptation of Gabriel García Márquez's novel Love in the Time of Cholera - Moreno may have an entire host of angels watching over her.

It certainly sounds like one. Born into a prosperous middle-class family (her mother was a pathologist, her father a cattle breeder), Moreno attended a private British school in Bogotá, and began taking acting lessons to help her overcome her shyness.

She was studying advertising at college in Bogotá and taking drama classes on the side when an anonymous admirer referred her for the casting audition for Maria Full of Grace.

Maria Full of Grace - the tragic story of a young, pregnant Colombian drug mule - both wowed critics and catapulted Moreno from a 22-year-old unknown student, who had never had a screen role, to Bogotá's Great Hollywood Hope.

Suddenly, Moreno was out on all the red carpets, dolled up in Roberto Cavalli with diamonds nestled in her cleavage, or having dinner in Beverly Hills with the likes of Kate Winslet and Cate Blanchett.

The director of The Motorcycle Diaries, Walter Salles, told her he wanted to work with her; an agent promised her a role opposite Al Pacino. But though all of this sounded pretty much like an actor's idea of nirvana, for Moreno it was also disturbing.

But Moreno didn't think so. 'I said, "I don't want to get naked. I don't care if it's Al Pacino or the biggest movie star in the world - I just don't want to do those types of roles."' Moreno decided to hold out for something more interesting. She had to wait three years.

I am sitting with Moreno in a perky Upper East Side vegan restaurant on a cold, bright March afternoon, eating marinated tofu and listening to her talk about Maria. With her pretty, moon-shaped face, extra-long jeans and glossy black hair tucked up inside a chunky wool ski-hat, Moreno looks more like a college student than a film star.

But you can see the starlet potential none the less. The little waist and curving hips. The toasted-almond skin. The big, sad, sexy-orphan eyes. And this, of course, is the problem. Although Moreno's skill as an actress is prodigious, put her in a slinky gown and she's a knockout.

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