Bandit Stars Stayed at Drug Trafficker's Ranch

Latina sirens were unwitting guests of underworld boss El Grande Call it method acting of a kind or a form of research. While shooting the movie Bandidas in northern Mexico four years ago, Penélope Cruz and Salma Hayek played outlaws by day before the cameras, and then allegedly slept at a ranch owned, appropriately enough, by a drug trafficker. There is no suggestion the actors knew who the ranch owner was when they stayed for several nights, at the house beside a reservoir in the state of Durango. But it turns out the property belonged to Sergio Bernal, a man wanted on suspicion of drug trafficking and known locally as El Grande, or the Big One. Mexican paparazzi who covered the actors' stay in Durango during the eight-week shoot say their security was unusually tight. The revelation came from protected witnesses questioned... [read full story]