Barbara Lopez

Bárbara López is playing the long game. Ten years into her career, and the Monterrey-born actor knows the goal isn’t volume but growth—picking roles that test her and waiting for the ones worth the wait. So far, as a result, her slate spans broadcast hits, Netflix cult favorites, and incisive, socially minded thrillers—each chosen on purpose.

You can trace that intent back to Amar a muerte, a primetime drama where a reincarnation plot ran in parallel with a slow, careful same-sex romance between Juliana and Valentina. That thread—Juliantina—outlasted the show and built a community that still checks in years later. Ask López what still echoes from Amar a muerte—and the Juliantina phenomenon that sprang from it—and her answer starts, specifically, with the audience.

“What stays with me most is how many people felt seen—how a love story on screen softened something in their real lives,” she says. “I’ve had fans tell me it helped them come out to a parent, or believe they deserved tenderness. That’s a gift I’ll always protect. If there’s a way to revisit that world with the same honesty and craft—and with something new to say—I’m there.” The pairing of Juliana and Valentina (played by Macarena Achaga) became a touchstone for viewers who rarely saw themselves represented without tragedy. That kind of response clarifies the stakes, but it also becomes a compass.

Momentum, of course, has a way of testing your compass. “As an actress, I love what I do and I would love to be constantly working,” López says. “But I’ve realized that how I grow matters just as much as what projects I choose. I’ve learned that patience is essential—it allows me to wait for the roles that truly challenge me, that feel distinct from one another, and that push me beyond who I already am.” The patience she’s talking about requires the discipline to let the right role arrive, and the confidence to pass on the wrong one.

That discipline showed up in Desenfrenadas (Unstoppable), the 2020 Netflix road-trip drama anchored by four young women re-plotting their lives on the fly. It’s the title she points to when asked which early project earned her a different kind of trust. “I like to think Desenfrenadas was a turning point,” she says. “It allowed a different side of me to emerge as an actress, and I’m certain the audience connected with that world because it felt authentic, with characters who were profoundly real.” If Juliantina gave López a global fan base, Desenfrenadas gave that fan base (and López) a fuller view of what she could do.

From there, her choices became a series of small refusals—against typecasting, against repetition, against the temptation to sprint for sprinting’s sake. “For me, a project feels purposeful when it’s honest and believable—when its characters challenge me, expand my range, and allow me to grow both as an actress and as a human being,” she says. “If it only repeats me, then it’s not truly purposeful.” That filter maps cleanly onto the last few years: the pageant-world critique of Señorita 89, the escalating moral weather of Isla Brava, and a primetime telenovela that asks her to sustain a character across months of high-volume production. It’s a lot, yes—but López is entirely equipped.

“I think it’s a combination of truly knowing both genres, studying them, trusting your director, and—above all—following your intuition,” she says, describing how she toggles between the brisk grammar of a telenovela and the slow-burn calibration of a thriller. That sensitivity is one reason her characters feel lived-in, no matter the format.

Authorship is the other. López keeps a working folder of references—“characters—real or fictional—that inspire me, that are different from who I am or from what I’ve done before”—and she’s hands-on about shaping the person behind the lines. “I’ve learned to look beyond what’s written—to be creative, to make suggestions, and not to be afraid of trying new things for my character. If something doesn’t fit, the director will usually let me know.” And for López, the point isn’t control, more so curiosity. Try it, see if it reads true, and adjust when needed. Over time, that habit builds a formidable filmography that doesn’t blur together.

You can still witness the results in real-time via Isla Brava, ViX’s seaside thriller that returned this summer with a tighter engine and a clearer center. As Pilar, López spent Season 1 absorbing the show’s rules. Season 2 gives her latitude to bend them. “In the second season, Pilar makes many more decisions—she acts instead of reacting,” she says. “And since she’s no longer part of the police, she has the freedom to break the rules, which allowed us to see her true essence. That changed everything: the way she walks into a room, how she looks at other characters, and even how she relates to herself.” Agency becomes character; character becomes plot. The difference is crafted to be visible.

On the other hand, López is also prone to staying open to projects that expand the toolkit in less obvious ways. In Volver a Caer, a modern reframing of the 1877 novel Anna Karenina, López’s supporting turn as Mia is a reminder that proximity to strong material—and strong scene partners—can be its own classroom. And as of now, there’s the nightly sprint. Los hilos del pasado, a new TelevisaUnivision telenovela, positions López as a lead. It’s a demanding ask—by design.

“Working on a telenovela is very demanding, because you don’t get many chances to repeat or refine your scenes—you have to give your best from the very first take,” she says. “That taught me a lot. Having to keep my emotions so close to the surface also made me much more emotionally flexible, and it helped me access those emotions much faster. I truly believe doing a telenovela is a powerful acting exercise; it requires enormous energy and focus.” If streaming taught her to calibrate, broadcast taught her to commit—quickly.

Looking ahead, she’s thinking less about volume and more about velocity. “I think this is a moment for me to learn to wait—to dare to say no to more projects and to choose a truly special character,” López says. “In the end, I believe characters have a way of finding you, often beyond how much you think you want them. I like being surprised by them; that’s what keeps it challenging.” For any artist, it’s a quiet risk—betting that patience will put her in the rooms she actually wants rather than the ones that arrive first. But it’s also one that’s proven to be far more rewarding when the stars align.

There’s also a curiosity about building from the ground up. “I feel it’s time to start experimenting with creating my own projects—not necessarily for the outcome, but simply to understand how stories are built,” she tells us. That doesn’t read as a hard pivot so much as an appetite for perspective. Seeing how a concept becomes a script becomes a shoot becomes an edit tends to change the way you act inside the frame. It can make you bolder about what matters and calmer about what doesn’t.

Taken together, the current slate looks like philosophy in action. Isla Brava asks her to steer a thriller, adjusting Pilar’s center of gravity from responder to driver. Los hilos del pasado asks for precision at scale—consistency without flattening, emotional access without burnout. The Netflix-era favorite keeps bringing new viewers to earlier work they missed the first time. Each format pulls at a new angle, but intention keeps the pattern intact.

What cuts through, both in conversation and on screen, is a kind of measured confidence. Not the bravado of someone who thinks she’s solved acting, but the steadiness of someone who’s built a practice: know the genres, read the room, push for specificity, let the director be the director, and keep your curiosity intact. When in doubt, go back to the character folder, dig deep, and see if it fits.

One project asks her to stay sharp; another has asked her to reframe a character in front of an audience that already thinks it knows her. The next script might ask for something else entirely. And if it’s honest and it challenges her, she’ll say yes. If it isn’t, she’ll wait. Ten years in, she moves on her terms. But at this point, she’s earned it.

• Team Credits

  Photography: Alberto Hidalgo

  Hair: Alejandro Íñiguez

  Makeup: Stephanie Sznicer

  Cover: Laramie Cheyenne

  Editor-in-Chief: Aedan Juvet