Need to Know: Luis Gerardo Méndez

Photography by Leo Manzo

"Comedy is a serious business," says Luis Gerardo Mendez, who, as one of Mexico's hottest celebrity commodities, has proven the statement true. In 2013, Mendez starred in the class send-up The Noble Family, which became his home country's highest-grossing film ever, and last year he appeared in the spirited Cantinflas, the Mexican Best Foreign Language Film entry for the 2015 Academy Awards.

With his friend, Noble Family director Gary Alazraki, Mendez is now busy co-producing Netflix's first Spanish-language series, Club de Cuervos (set to premiere this summer), which he calls "the House of Cards of football." Also a comedy, the show casts Mendez as the playboy heir of a soccer club -- "a mama's boy," he says, "who likes cocaine and fucks everything."

Mendez's own appetites were called into question after an August 2014 interview with Moi magazine, wherein, he claims, his views on fidelity were misconstrued as his coming out.

"For me, what's important in Mexico is that people stop worrying about somebody's sexuality," the actor says. "The moment that's not breaking news will be an important step in society." Mendez's next step is a move to L.A., where he and Alazraki will likely fine-tune The Brothers Huffington-Fynne, another funny flick, in which Mendez plays four roles. Until then, he's walking around Mexico as if in a hall of mirrors. "Right now I'm the face of Pepsi and Nextel," he says, "so I see myself a lot in the street, and it's weird. I can't get used to that." Perhaps he should start.