Mexican officials say Sean Penn's contacts with drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman helped them track the fugitive down - even if he slipped away from an initial raid on the hideout where the Hollywood actor apparently met him.
Penn's article on Guzman was published on Saturday by Rolling Stone magazine, a day after Mexican marines captured the world's most wanted kingpin in the city of Los Mochis.
Penn wrote of elaborate security precautions, but also said that as he flew to Mexico on October 2 for the meeting, "I see no spying eyes, but I assume they are there."
He was apparently right.
A Mexican federal law enforcement official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not permitted to comment, told the Associated Press that the Penn interview led authorities to Guzman in the area of Tamazula.
They raided Guzman's remote hideout a few days after the interview and narrowly missed capturing Guzman, whose escaped from Mexico's top security prison in July.
Attorney General Arely Gomez said that investigators had been aided in locating Guzman by documented contacts between his lawyers and "actors and producers" she said were interested in making a film about him, though she did not name them.
Marines finally caught Guzman in a residential neighbourhood of Los Mochis, where they'd been monitoring a suspected safe house.
Five people died in a gun battle as troops moved in.
In the interview, Guzman defends his work at the head of the world's biggest drug trafficking organisation.
When asked if he is to blame for high addiction rates, he responds: "No, that is false, because the day I don't exist, it's not going to decrease in any way at all."
Penn wrote that Guzman was interested in having a movie filmed on his life and wanted Mexican actress Kate del Castillo, who had portrayed a drug trafficker in a television series, involved in the project.
There was no immediate response from representatives for either Penn or del Castillo to the Mexican official's comments.
Earlier on Saturday, a federal law enforcement official said that Mexico is willing to extradite Guzman to the United States.
But he cautioned it could take at least six months to approve extradition through courts, where Guzman's lawyers can battle a move to the US, where he faces drug trafficking charges in several states.
