Barbara Mori

Bárbara Mori Ochoa, born February 2, 1978, is a Uruguayan-born Mexican actress, model, producer, and writer. She gained widespread recognition for playing the main character in the 2004 telenovela Rubí, which became one of the most successful telenovelas of all time. Beyond television, she has taken on lead roles in several Mexican, Hollywood, and Bollywood film productions.

Mori was born in Montevideo, Uruguay. Her paternal grandfather was Japanese, and her mother is of Lebanese descent. Following her parents' divorce when she was three years old, she spent her early childhood between Tokyo, Japan, and Uruguay before settling in Mexico City at the age of fourteen. She has two siblings, actress Kenya Mori and Kintaró Mori. At age fourteen, while working as a waitress, fashion designer Marcos Toledo invited her to work as a model.

She officially launched her modeling career in 1992 and later studied acting at El Centro de Estudios de Formación Actoral. Mori made her acting debut in the Mexican telenovela Al norte del corazón, followed by appearances in Tric Tac and the hit series Mirada de mujer in 1997. Her role in Mirada de mujer earned her a TVyNovelas Award for Best New Actress.

In 1998, Mori secured her first leading television role in Azul Tequila, followed by Me muero por tí in 1999 and the romantic comedy Inspiración in 2001, which marked her feature film debut. She continued to appear in series such as Súbete A Mi Moto and Amor descarado. In 2004, she signed with Televisa and starred in the soap opera Rubí, receiving another TVyNovelas Award for her performance.

Transitioning further into feature films, Mori starred in the 2005 blockbuster La mujer de mi hermano and provided voice work for the Spanish-language edition of Robots. She produced and starred in the psychological crime thriller Amor, Dolor y Viceversa (Violanchelo) in 2008 and appeared in Insignificant Things, produced by Guillermo del Toro. In 2010, she starred opposite Bollywood actor Hrithik Roshan in the film Kites, which was filmed in New Mexico, Las Vegas, and Los Angeles.

Mori produced and starred in the 2011 action-drama Viento En Contra, distributed by Warner Bros. Her later project credits include Cantinflas in 2014 and Treintona, soltera y fantástica in 2016. In her personal life, Mori has a son, Sergio Mayer Mori, born in 1998 from her relationship with actor Sergio Mayer. She was married to baseball player Kenneth Ray Sigman from 2016 to 2017. An early-stage cancer survivor, she discussed her experience in the docu-drama 1 a Minute.