Santiago Cabrera: Vagabond life has shaped actor's style

PASADENA, Calif. — As a youngster, Santiago Cabrera was constantly on the move.

With his dad working as a diplomat, the actor figures he spent a third of his life in England, a third in his family’s native Chile and a third just moving around.

By age 10, he was fluent in English. Because he attended an American school while living in Romania, he spoke with an American accent. Then the family relocated to London.

“But I was a shy 10-year-old in a new school, and I went into ‘British’ in a matter of days just to blend in,” the 36-year-old said during a recent interview.

Cabrera has concentrated on blending in ever since.

“Not necessarily did I ever feel like I fit in,” he said in a clipped British accent. “Even in Chile, I’m a bit different because I’ve been living abroad, and abroad is something different.”

The challenge, he said, has helped him in his acting career.

“I think that’s why there’s comfort in creating characters. You get to explore so many things that you know, aspects that you have, but maybe you don’t use them in real life.”

Cabrera has been mining those aspects for 16 years. He has played Austrian composer Mozart onstage in Amadeus; British aristocrat Sir Lancelot on the BBC series Merlin; a New York artist who paints the future on NBC’s Heroes; and, now, a dashing French cavalier on BBC America’s The Musketeers, premiering on Sunday in the United States. (The show premiered in January in Britain.)

In his younger days, Cabrera relied, too, on his athletic prowess to fit in quickly. He played semipro soccer but said he never considered it a career.

“I make parallels, especially in theater, which is where I started: the dressing room, the getting dressed together, the teamwork, the rehearsal — all of that is very similar to being in a sport. So straightaway it was like something I’d been doing all my life.”

When he was starting out, he snagged small parts on British television.

“I remember one of my first shows was a video game, a motion-capture character, and they told me how much they paid me — it was less than 1,000 pounds a day or something, but I thought I was rich.

“Then you go out and see the real world and you’re grinding every day and you always question it, but when you can do it, it’s the greatest job in the world.”

Cabrera has been married for nine years to writer-director Anna Marcea.

He said they make it a rule to never be apart longer than two weeks — a challenge with his career.

“We work it out that whatever trip or whatever project I’m doing, we plan that she’ll either visit or I’ll visit after every two weeks,” he said.

They lucked out with The Musketeers: Filming took place in Prague; Marcea accompanied him to the Czech Republic.

Cabrera plays Aramis, the suave lover of the trio, on The Musketeers. He was the only actor not in Britain when they were casting, so he sent an audition tape playing a generic Musketeer.

“They approached me again and said, ‘We’re interested in you for Aramis.’ And that’s when it really came (to me). I loved it from the get-go, but, when I saw that character, it really spoke to me.”