José Ángel Llamas was a producer, filmmaker, cameraman and actor, a profession he practiced for 15 years (Photo: Ángel Delgado/Clasos.com/LatinContent via Getty Images).
Nothing personal is one of the most important telenovelas on Mexican television, one of the star products of TV Azteca, which not only broke into the national programming, but also made artists like Ana Colchero, Demián Bichir and Rogelio Guerra, once of Televisa, dare to to lead the competition in telenovelas.
But Nothing Personal also became the perfect showcase for the new talent, an apparently inexperienced one – having worked behind the scenes for more than a decade – but very attractive. Jose Angel Flames and his character “Luis Mario” was the reason that thousands tuned in to the TV station Ajusco.
And although he owes the TV Azteca projection, José Ángel Llamas achieved internationalization in 2002 when he signed a contract with the Telemundo network to present the reality show Protagonistas de telenovela, later becoming the headline of other melodramas for this television channel. With both ventures, he managed to add the love of my life, shameless love, the law of silence, life for you, the bought woman, to his meteoric career.
Aside from the tumultuous relationship he had with Gabriela Spanic at the beginning of the new century and then his marriage to actress Mara Croatto, Llamas was unaware of the scandal, but not even that apparent calm was enough to make him happy..
José Ángel Llamas and his wife Mara Croatto at the 2006 Billboard Latin Music Awards (Photo: John Parra/FilmMagic for Morgan Renee Entertainment).
“Fame began to change my humility and my simplicity, and it began to give me a certain power and control that I believed I had everything in the palm of my hand and that if I said, ‘I want this, I could achieve it ‘ was the dream of being able to have a wife, a family, a big house, a nice car, and when I had all that, I realized I wasn’t happy. I hated what I had to love and I loved what I had to hate loved,” he told evangelical networks.
And it is that before it disappears from the forums and before the recordings fugitives of fatehis last telenovela, Llamas had an epiphany. “There was a friend who was working on the same novel and he was on the lighting team and he was wearing a t-shirt that said ‘Only a man can make a difference’ but on the back it said ‘Jesus’ I don’t know what happened , but he called, I was very careful and went to him and said: ‘What about this Jesus?’, the next day he came with a Bible and he talked to me about Jesus Christ called Mara and said her: ‘Mara, will you accompany me to the church?’”. The experience allowed him to understand that he really didn’t feel fulfillment or peace.
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His renewed faith led him to take his family to Calvary Chapel Fort Lauderdale, a Hispanic church in South Florida, where he finally felt identified and discovered his true desire to become a spiritual leader.
For a little over a decade, José Ángel Llamas has served in various ministerial positions in Fort Lauderdale, and “God has confirmed the call to shepherd and teach the Spanish-speaking community during the pandemic that he has devoted to in recent years,” his statement said fellow believers.