Before his death at 42, Canto savored a mobile life

Adan Canto had a richly mobile life.
As a boy, he walked from Mexico to the United States – daily. As a young man, he lived in Mexico City, San Antonio, Manhattan and Los Angeles; he starred in Spanish roles and then in English, including – until his recent death – the male lead (shown here) in “The Cleaning Lady,” which starts its season at 8 p.m. Tuesday (March 5) on Fox.
Canto’s life was so mobile that even this seems logical: His death, Jan. 8, was at his home in … Clear Lake, Iowa. His memorial service was in the same Clear Lake ballroom where Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper had their final concert.
Canto died of appendix cancer, which reportedly strikes only one or two people per million. He was 42, similar to Chadwick Boseman’s death from colon cancer at 43.
After Boseman’s illness and death, the “Black Panther” movie franchise was re-arranged. After Canto’s, the “Cleaning Lady” series needed an overhaul.
The show centers on Thony (Elodie Yung), a Cambodian-Filipino doctor who came to the U.S. to find medical treatment for her son. Unable to get a medical license, she worked as a cleaning lady, before being wedged between two men: Arman (Canto) was a good-hearted drug boss; Garrett (Oliver Hudson) was an FBI agent.
Both men helped her, risking their careers. It was an intriguing triangle – or rectangle, counting Armand’s wife Nadia – suddenly disrupted: At the end of the second season, Garrett was killed; when filming started (in December) for the third, Canto was too sick to continue. He had reportedly been fighting the cancer for four years and was hoping to rejoin the show later..
The season-opener — directed by Timothy Busfield, who joins the series as a producer-director – masks that neatly. We see a shadowy gunfight and then Armand is missing. One possibility is that this will become the story of two former foes (Thony and Nadia), now forced together, with no man to intervene.
Whatever happens, Canto’s story is intriguing. Details come from a Television Critics Association interview, web sources and his obituary from a Clear Lake funeral home:
Canto grew up south of the border, but walked to a Catholic school n Del Rio, Texas. “In the ‘80s and ‘90s, crossing the border a dozen times a day was no big deal,” he said.
The process gave him an easy acceptance of both cultures. “I had a group of friends on both sides,” he said, something that continued. “I go back to Mexico and I’m fully Mexican, whatever that means, and fluent in Spanish.”
His father was a dentist, but also spent time working at his own father’s ranch. As a boy, Canto savored time at his grandfather’s ranch, where he rode goats. His widow described him as being a “cowboy at heart, poet by nature.”
The poetic side apparently prevailed. At 7, he began singing in public. At 16, he left home to be a singer-songwriter in Mexico City and then San Antonio,.At 25, he moved to Los Angeles, but returned to act in several Spanish-language movies and TV shows.
In his return to Los Angeles, he began working steadily. He had ongoing roles in “The Following” (as a serial killer’s follower), “Mixology” (a sexy bartender), “Designated Survivor” (the vice-president-elect) and “Blood & Oil” (selling his boss’ secrets). And in an “X-Men” movie, he was the fiercely powerful Sunspot.
Still, his big moments were far from Hollywood. He was living in New York when he met a server at the coffeeshop across the street. Canto and Stephanie Lundquist, who’s also a sculptor and painter, married and had two children.
With the kids (now 3 and 1), they decided to live near her parents. A bi-coastal, bi-national life found a home in Clear Lake, Iowa.