Spy Kids Star Carla Gugino Called Out Her Character’s “Impossible” Backstory

Twenty-three years ago, the beloved children’s movie Spy Kids introduced the Cortez family and brought us on their grand adventures in espionage. Carla Gugino and Antonio Banderas played the parents, Ingrid and Gregorio Cortez, a pair of married spies who left field work when they had their kids, Carmen (Alexa Vega) and Juni (Daryl Sabara). Their family life was unconventional — and all the more so when you take into account that Gugino was only 27 during filming.

The Math Doesn’t Math

Gugino was asked about playing a wife and mother to tweens during a recent Buzzfeed interview, and she described it as “so funny” because she was “10 years, at least, too young for the role.” Ingrid’s kids were 11 and 9 years old, Gugino pointed out, and she was supposed to have worked as a spy for 10 years before that. Her real-life age just didn’t work with Ingrid’s backstory.

“It was physically totally impossible,” Gugino said.

Director Robert Rodriguez was the one who convinced Gugino the age detail could be overlooked. “We were talking about it, and I had auditioned for him and he said, ‘I think if we do our job right, no one will ever question it,’” she recalled to Buzzfeed. “And it’s so funny like you said, nobody did.”

The Spy Kids Legacy

To be honest, kids probably aren’t the best at guessing ages, and on top of that, the mom’s age is one of the least weird parts of the movie. Spy Kids is full of strangeness, from its creepy TV show to the army of robot children. Still, kids loved it, and it spawned a whole franchise, including four more movies (so far) and an animated series. Gugino, Banderas, Vega, and Sabara all starred in the first three movies. Gugino told Buzzfeed that “the whole experience was incredible” and she loved her character.

After the first three movies came out between 2001 and 2003, there was a gap before the fourth movie, 2011’s Spy Kids: All the Time in the World. That’s the last film with Vega and Sabara as the Cortez kids. The most recent film, Spy Kids: Armageddon, came out in September with a new spy family at the center: the Tango-Torrez family. And this time, the mom math seems to add up.