R.I.P. Adan Canto, Designated Survivor and The Cleaning Lady star

Adan Canto, the star of The Cleaning Lady and Designated Survivor, died last night. Per Deadline, the actor had appendiceal cancer, a diagnosis he kept private. He was 42.

Canto hailed from Acuña, Mexico, where he was born in December 1981. Growing up on the border, he regularly crossed the border between Acuña and Del Rio, which he describes as “one town separated by the border.” At the age of 10, he got his first break as an extra in Like Water For Chocolate, which was filming in Acuña. The presence of a film set wasn’t something a young Canto wasn’t prepared for.

“I remember it vividly, just the experience of being on set and the creation of a world,” Canto said in 2022. “The wardrobe, the set design—it was a beautiful thing. But I just never thought I would get to be a part of that world. I never thought it was something that you can aim for or achieve coming from such a small town, right?”

Canto had a hard time seeing a future in movies. At the time, he chose to focus on music after receiving positive feedback from producers in Texas and Mexico City. Nevertheless, Canto “fell into acting” after hitting a wall with music. After booking his first gig in Mexico, he began performing on stage and in indie films.

In 2013, Canto was cast in Kevin Williamson’s series The Following, opposite Kevin Bacon. The show only lasted a season, but he followed the breakthrough with a role in X-Men: Days Of Future Past, playing Sunspot, and in the ABC comedy Mixology. He directed his first short, Before Tomorrow, that same year. He would helm another, The Short, in 2020.

Canto’s star rose considerably in the back half of the 2010s. Though Mixology fizzed after a season, Canto found himself back on ABC as the Vice President-elect on the Kiefer Sutherland vehicle Designated Survivor. The show ran for three seasons, even finding a second life on Netflix after its abrupt cancelation.

‌Fox’s The Cleaning Lady made Canto a star in the United States. The thriller about a doctor who becomes a cleaning lady for the mob became an immediate hit on Fox, where Canto’s smoldering, soft-spoken charms earned a legion of new fans. He appeared in the first two seasons of Cleaning Lady and hoped to rejoin the show for season three before his health declined.

Canto is survived by his wife, artist Stephanie Lindquist, whom he met in 2012 and married in 2017. The couple had two children: Roman, 3, and Josephine, 1.