America Ferrera.

• Author: Rampell, Ed
• Position: THE PROGRESSIVE INTERVIEW - Interview

America Ferrera is the epitome of a socially engaged artist. The former Ugly Betty star earlier this year portrayed Helen Chavez, the title character's wife in the movie Cesar Chavez. She also exposed the climate change deniers (and the oil interests behind them) in the Showtime series Years of Living Dangerously. She found time to provide the voice for Astrid in the DreamWorks 3D animated sequel How to Train Your Dragon 2. And Ferrera fought for female empowerment in the documentary Half the Sky that aired on the PBS Independent Lens series in 2012.

The L.A.-born actress is committed to advancing Latinos' screen image, and she chooses parts that give the lie to celluloid stereotypes.

Off screen, she is not afraid to take a stand. She works with Voto Latino to get more people registered at the polls, and she actively works for the empowerment of girls and women. This daughter of immigrants from Honduras is also a passionate advocate of humane immigration reform.

Ferrera scored her first major role in 2002 while still a teenager, as the lead character Ana Garcia--a Chicana who toils in a sweatshop but dreams of attending university. That role was in Real Women Have Curves, a coming-of-age film co-written by Josefina Lopez, who had crossed the border from Mexico as an undocumented immigrant when she was five. Ferrera went on to co-star in How the Garcia Girls Spent Their Summer and The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.

Her big break came in 2006 when she scored the title role in the ABC comedy series Ugly Betty, which ran through 2010. Ferrera won an Emmy and a Golden Globe, among other awards, for portraying the twenty-two-year-old Mexican American Betty Suarez, who lives with her family in Queens and commutes to Manhattan, where she works at Mode, a chic Vopue-like style magazine. Betty, however, is fashion-challenged, wears braces, and does not have a runway model's looks. But Betty is bright, kind, hard working, and well organized, and she has an endearing, winning personality.

In person, Ferrera's essential decency, sweetness, and smarts shine through. I interviewed her on International Women's Day at a Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills. And she responded to follow-up questions in subsequent months.

Q: Do you feel that you have to "represent" Latinas?

America Ferrera: I feel like I'm always only making decisions for myself. But when there are so many limited opportunities and options to see Latino faces, you do feel that obligation to choose wisely and to really think about how are you representing your community and what's the best way to be a part of the progress. My first film I ever did was Real Women Have Curves with the late Lupe Ontiveros. Working with her gave me an immediate awareness of what it took for someone like me to have the career that I have.

This amazingly talented woman spent the majority of her career playing maids...