Oscar Jaenada is heading to the shallows…
The 40-year-old Spanish actor has joined the cast of Jaume Collet-Serra’s The Shallows opposite Blake Lively.
Jaenada, a Goya Award winner, is crossing over into the mainstream after bringing beloved Mexican comedic icon Cantinflas to the screen in the 2014 movie of the same name.
He has a small, but book-ended role in The Shallows.
Written by Anthony Jaswinski, the story centers on a young woman (Lively) who is grieving the loss her mother and surfing in an isolated area when she gets stranded on a buoy. Things take a turn for the worse when a gigantic great white shark comes between her and the shore.
The film was known as In The Deep when Sony Pictures won a bidding war for the spec script in September 2014, and brought Collet-Serra aboard in June.
Jaenada, who appears in The Weinstein Company’s 2016 offering Hands Of Stone opposite Robert De Niro, will play Carlos in the film, described as a workman who drives Lively’s character to the beach and then shows up again at the end of the film to check on her.
The film is casting now and has three other small supporting roles that are earmarked for Hispanic actors.
Jaenada won the coveted Goya (Spain’s equivalent of the Academy Award) for his portrayal of Camaron de la Isla, the legendary Spanish flamenco dancer, in 2005’s Camaron: When Flamenco Became Legend.
Cantinflas was Mexico’s 2015 foreign-language Oscar submission.
In addition, the actor had a starring role in Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, and a critically praised appearance in Steven Soderbergh’s Che.
