The reign of Rodrigo Santoro
It was one of the more striking transformations in any personal filmography. In the 2003 ensemble film “Love Actually,” Brazilian actor Rodrigo Santoro played Karl, a handsome, sweetly shy tech guy in the early stages of an office romance with Laura Linney’s Sarah. Then, in a truly astonishing change, Santoro was unrecognizable but utterly unforgettable as the grotesquely pierced, inhumanly tall, power-mad god king Xerxes in the kinetic historical action epic “300.”