LICENSE TO THRILL

Actress and model NATALIE MARTINEZ has secret agent skills among her many talents...

- JORDAN RIEFE

A Hollywood career held no allure for Natalie Martinez when she was growing up. Not because she figured it was out of reach, but because she had other plans. But sometimes life doesn’t give a damn about other plans. These days, she’s costarring with Hugh Jackman in Warner Brothers’ sci-fi thriller, Reminiscence, and has countless acting credits to her name. Splitting her time between L.A. and her native Miami, she’s on the beach on weekends, and on the set on weekdays, trading lines with famous leading men like Jake Gyllenhaal in the critically acclaimed cop drama, End of Watch and more recently the late, great Chadwick Boseman in 2016’s Message from the King.

“He was the epitome of a gentleman. Every time I was with him I’d get so happy cause he was so humble, so sweet, always so nice,” she says of Boseman, whom she knew from social gatherings and mutual friends. “We had some pretty racy scenes in Message from the King. When we shot them, he was a class act. I was super comfortable. He was always making sure everything’s okay with me. He was an actor’s actor, where I definitely felt like I got stuff out of him and vice versa. I was really fortunate to shoot with him.”

With no formal training, Natalie learned acting on the job, namely a dramatic series called Fashion House, co-starring Morgan Fairchild. On it, she played entrepreneurial designer Michelle Miller, the target of fashion maven Maria Gianni, played by Bo Derek. “We shot 65 episodes in 65 days,” she gasps. “That’s where I fell in love with acting.”