Who is Mexican actress connecting Penn to El Chapo?

The Mexican actress behind Sean Penn's interview with drug lord El Chapo is a star in her native country, and vocal about politics. (Source: CNN;GETTY; SONY PICTURES; SHOWTIME; TWITTER; CEPROPIE; TELEMUNDO; ROLLING STONE; TV AZTECA )

Americans were only introduced to Kate del Castillo in recent years. But the woman who actor Sean Penn says served as the link between him and drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman has been famous in Mexico for a long time.

In the US, she has appeared in films including last year’s thriller No Good Deed and the TV shows Weeds and Jane the Virgin.
After a very successful career as a soap opera actress in Mexico, del Castillo rose to fame with US Hispanics thanks to her role in the 2011 Telemundo series The Queen of the South. In the wildly popular series, she plays a woman who, through a mix of tragic and unfortunate events, becomes a drug queen.
The actress raised eyebrows in 2012 when she posted a tweet about El Chapo.
“Today I believe more in El Chapo Guzman than in the governments that hide the truth from me, even though it is painful,” del Castillo wrote, She later reflected on an interview on CNN en Espanol that, more than a compliment to El Chapo, her message was a criticism of the Mexican political class.
She said, “Someone like that, at least we know who he is, we know what he does, we know what his profession is. The others sometimes are worse criminals and have numbed us and hide everything from us.”
After El Chapo escaped last July, she told CNN en Espanol she was dumbfounded.
“I feel sorry about that, because I always defend Mexico,” she said. “First of all, I’m Mexican and I get angry when in the United States people say bad things about Mexico, and I defend Mexico. But the moment comes when you can’t defend that which is indefensible.”

In her roles on film or TV, she’s been at odds with the law multiple times.

Now, after helping Penn get an interview with El chapo, she may be in trouble for real: Mexican authorities told CNN they want to question her.