America Ferrera
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| America Ferrera | |
| Birth name | America Georgine Ferrera |
| Born | April 18, 1984 Los Angeles, California |
| Notable roles | Betty Suarez on Ugly Betty |
America Ferrera (born America Georgine Ferrera April 18, 1984) is an American actress. As of 2006, she stars in the ABC dramedy series Ugly Betty.
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[edit] Biography
[edit] Early life
Ferrera was born in Los Angeles, California to Honduran parents and was raised by her mother in Woodland Hills, California. She is the youngest of six siblings. She started acting at age eight in school plays and community theater. Ferrera attends the University of Southern California, where she's double-majoring in Theater and International Relations.
[edit] Career
In 2002, she made her film debut in Real Women Have Curves. For her performance as an overweight teen living in a Los Angeles barrio, constantly at odds with her mother and struggling to gain her independence and make a better life for herself, she earned the Jury Award for Best Actress at the Sundance Film Festival, an Independent Spirit Award nomination for Best Debut Performance, and a Young Artist Award nomination as Best Performance by a Leading Young Actress.
Ferrera followed this with roles in both television (Touched by an Angel) and film (The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants and Lords of Dogtown). Ferrera received a 2005 Movieline Breakthrough Award. During an interview with her The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants co-star Alexis Bledel, for Latina Magazine, she was stunned to learn that Alexis spoke Spanish during productions of the film.
In December 2005, she appeared in the off-Broadway play Dog Sees God: Confessions of a Teenage Blockhead, directed by Trip Cullman. In 2006, she landed the lead role in Ugly Betty, an adaptation of the Colombian hit telenovela Betty La Fea, in which she portrays a girl that her peers find extremely unattractive, thus the series title. As Betty Suarez, Ferrera wears fake braces on her teeth, bushy eyebrows and a disheveled wig, and make-up and clothing intended to downplay her own good looks.
According to Ugly Betty hair department head Roddy Stayton, "She's a gorgeous girl with an incredible style sensibility in her personal life. What we do is Bettify her in the morning. It's in contrast to the rest of the show, where everybody else is glammed up", adding that it was Ferrera herself who coined the term "Bettification" to describe the process.[1]
[edit] Filmography
- Hacia la oscuridad (2007) (post-production) as Luiza
- Boy Immigrant (2007) (post-production) as Marta
- Ugly Betty as Betty
- Planet H2O: "Water World" (2006) as the host.[1]
- Steel City (2006) as Amy Barnes
- 3:52 (2005) as Kate
- Lords of Dogtown (2005) as Thunder Monkey
- The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (2005) as Carmen
- How the Garcia Girls Spent Their Summer (2005)
- CSI: Crime Scene Investigation as April Lopez
- Plainsong (2004) as Victoria Roubideaux
- Darkness Plus Twelve (2004) as Luiza
- $5.15/Hr. (2004)
- Touched by an Angel: "The Word" (2002) as Charlee
- Gotta Kick It Up! (2002) as Yolanda
- Real Women Have Curves (2002) as Ana Garcia
- American Family: "Fighting Fridas" (2002) as a member of the football team
- The Have Little: play by Migdalia Cruz (2002) as Lillian Rivera
[edit] Producer - filmography
- Hacia la oscuridad (2007) (post-production) executive producer as Luiza
[edit] Footnotes
- ^ Keveney, Bill. "It's a 'Bettification' project", USA Today, Gannett Co. Inc., 2006-10-04. (in English)
