Strong Spirit

He’s a sucker for a good suit and is set to bring none other than Gianni Versace back to life, but don’t be fooled: Edgar Ramirez’s passions go well beyond his ultra stylish surface.

Edgar Ramirez romanced Jennifer Lawrence in Joy and spooked Emily Blunt in The Girl on the Train, but the 40-year-old’s best stories are his own. He grew up all over Venezuela, where his father worked as a military attaché. Ramirez speaks five languages, curses in German, and studied to be a journalist before taking a sharp turn toward acting at 25. He stormed Cannes in 2010 with Carlos, a career defining, six-hour miniseries in which Ramirez played Venezuelan terrorist Carlos the Jackal, from his days as a young playboy admiring his own junk in a hotel-room mirror to his eventual capture some 20 years later. This month, in the second season of FX’s American Crime Story, Ramirez becomes another iconic rebel, the titular legendary fashion designer in The Assassination of Gianni Versace, which opens with Versace’s murder on the steps of his Miami Beach mansion. (Penélope Cruz stars as Donatella Versace; Ricky Martin appears as the designer’s longtime partner, Antonio D’Amico.) While Versace famously lived his life openly, Ramirez, who has been linked to former costars Jessica Chastain and Ana de Armas, prefers an existence laid less bare. Here, the international man of mystery—he splits his time between New York, L.A., and Caracas—explains why.

ELLE: Tell me about a time that being handsome got you out of trouble.

EDGAR RAMIREZ: Honestly, I try not to rely too much on that. It’s too relative and it’s too fragile. But maybe last night: I was trying to expand the number of seats of a dinner table and the restaurant was full. Maybe it was my accent that got me more seats.

ELLE: What surprised you about Versace?