Rodrigo Obregon Returns to Acting in Bob Yari's 'Papa Hemingway in Cuba'

Rodrigo Obregon returns to acting after a 12-year break in Bob Yari's biopic 'Papa Hemingway in Cuba' (Publicity photo).

LOS ANGELES, Calif.  – After taking a 12-year break following a career that spanned nearly two decades and led him to work with such stars as Arnold Schwarzengger, Benicio del Toro and others, actor Rodrigo Obregon has returned to acting in the new film “Papa Hemingway in Cuba.”

Produced by Bob Yari (“Crash,” “Agent Cody Banks”), the movie is the first American film to be shot in Cuba in more than 50 years, starring Minka Kelly (“The Butler”), Giovanni Ribisi (“Avatar”) and Adrian Sparks (“Insidious: Chapter 3) as Hemingway.

“I’m very pleased to work with such a talented director like Bob and an amazing cast,” Obregon said. “It was truly a great experience to film in Cuba and see his home and the places Hemingway visited and frequented while living there.”

In the film, Obregon portrays Lucas, a brooding but honorable Hemingway confidante who fought against fascism when the author met him while serving as a war correspondent in the Spanish Civil War in 1936. “Papa Hemingway in Cuba” tells the story of a young American reporter’s friendship with Hemingway in during the island’s revolution in the late 1950s. 

“The movie gloriously captured dictator Fulgencio Batista’s Cuba and the tremors of revolution and insurrection while showing Hemingway as a complex man who never left his humanity,” said Obregon. “It’s a credit to Bob Yari’s vision and steady hand that allowed him to create a movie that brings Hemingway to life in such an amazing way.”

With a successful career that spanned two decades, Obregon is long known for his action roles in films such as “Collateral Damage,” with Arnold Schwarzenegger, and “Django 2” with Franco Nero, and many others featuring such stars as Benicio del Toro and Peter Fonda.

As the son of legendary Colombian painter Alejandro Obregon and famed Colombian ballet empresaria Sonia Osorio, Rodrigo Obregon was destined to be an artist in his own right as he began a career in acting as a teenager. But Obregon soon realized he needed to come to the U.S. where he wouldn’t need to the strength of his family name to develop his career.

But after much success in the 1980s and 90s, it became clear that Obregon had to return to his native Colombia to take care of his family legacy that included the Obregon Museum, established by his father who had passed away in 1992, as well as the Obregon Foundation, the Colombian National Ballet, led by his aging mother and other business interests.

So in 2002, Obregon returned home and took on the role of restoring and reorganizing the museum, its charitable foundation as well as his mother’s beloved ballet company which is world renowned for its artistry. As he struggled to restore and rebuild his family’s legacy, Obregon also went after those who falsified paintings of his late father by helping legislators draft laws to prosecute art counterfeiters.

While there, Obregon saw the struggle between the Colombian government and the drug cartels and their guerrilla allies, and he joined the army and become involved in many army operations to uproot illegal cocaine and drug manufacturing camps in the Colombian jungle.

But as his family’s legacy appears secure and his work in the army was completed, Obregon realized he wanted to resume his acting career with his new family that had grown two-fold when his wife gave birth to quadruplets in 2011.