Twenty-three years ago, the beloved children's film Spies introduced us to the Cortez family and took us through their great adventures in espionage. Carla Gugino and Antonio Banderas play parents Ingrid Cortez and Gregorio Cortez, a pair of married spies who have a child, Carmen (Alex Vega) and Juni (Daryl Sabara) later left the scene. Their family life was unconventional - all the more so considering that Gugino was only 27 during filming.
Mathematics is not mathematics
Gugino was asked about playing a teenage wife and mother in a recent Buzzfeed interview, which she described as "so much fun" because she was "at least 10 years old, too young for the role." Gugino pointed out that Ingrid's two children were 11 and 9 years old, and she should have been a spy for 10 years before that. Her actual age doesn't match Ingrid's backstory.
"This is completely physically impossible," Gugino said.
Director Robert Rodriguez convinced Gugino that age details could be overlooked. "We were talking about it, and I auditioned for him, and he said, 'I don't think if we do our jobs, no one will question it,'" she recalled to Buzzfeed. "Like you said, it's fun, but no one does it."
The legacy of spy kids
Let's be honest, kids are probably not very good at guessing ages, and on top of that, the mom's age is one of the least weird parts of the movie. Spies is filled with strangeness, from creepy TV shows to an army of robot children. Still, kids loved it, and it spawned an entire franchise, including four more movies (so far) and an animated series. Gugino, Banderas, Vega and Zabala all starred in the first three films. Gugino told Buzzfeed that "the whole experience was incredible" and that she loved her role.
After the first three films were released between 2001 and 2003, there was a hiatus with the fourth film (2011's All the Time in the World) . This was the final film in which Vega and Sabara played the children of Cortez. The most recent film , Spy Kids: Armageddon , released in September, centers on a new spy family: the Tango-Torrez family. This time, Mom’s math seemed to be right.
