Diego Calva’s Criterion Closet picks reveal an actor who came to film through genuine obsession rather than professional necessity. He talks through studying Charlie Chaplin’s performance in ‘City Lights,’ pulls selections from Harmony Korine and Andrea Arnold’s coming-of-age work, and touches on Mexican cinema and cult classics that shaped his sensibility before Hollywood found him. The most specific detail in the whole video arrives early: Calva has tattoos dedicated to Martin Scorsese’s ‘After Hours’ and Richard Linklater’s ‘Slacker,’ two films that don’t exactly announce themselves as obvious choices for permanent ink, which tells you everything about how seriously he takes this.


