America Ferrera—Words That Matter

By Sarah Mosqueda   

America Ferrera has a way with words.

When Ferrera blew audiences away with her standout monologue in Greta Gerwig’s Barbie, it should not have come as any surprise. Ferrera has made a career out of pushing boundaries and challenging conventional ideas. As Gloria, she expressed the tensions of being a woman in last summer’s smash hit, but in her life as a successful actress, director and television producer, Ferrera speaks her truth—pushing back on traditional beauty standards and fighting for equality and representation with her political activism.

Earlier this year, Ferrera received the SeeHer Award at the 2024 Critics’ Choice Awards. The annual award is presented to a woman who “advocates for gender equality, portrays characters with authenticity, defies stereotypes and pushes boundaries.”

Entertainment writer Danielle Bruncati said that her inspirational speech at the awards ceremony may have surpassed her Barbie monologue. “Her words in Greta Gerwig’s fantastical comedy are sweet,” Bruncati bemused. “But Ferrera’s latest award acceptance speech may be even better.”

In that speech, Ferrera said, “I’m deeply thankful to you for this acknowledgment and this honor. Receiving the SeeHer Award for my contributions to more authentic portrayals of women and girls—could it be more meaningful to me?

“Because I grew up as a first-generation Honduran American girl in love with TV, film and theater, who desperately wanted to be a part of a storytelling legacy that I could not see myself reflected in.”

She went on to say that making a career of “portraying fully dimensional Latina characters” seemed impossible. But nearly 20 years later, thanks to many Latina women like herself, that impossible career has come to fruition.

Enriching Her Narrative

Ferrera’s debut film role as Ana García in 2002’s Real Women Have Curves featured the young actress delivering the first of many monologues she would give throughout her career. She began acting at an early age, performing in school productions and taking acting lessons in Los Angeles, where she grew up. Ferrera was the youngest of six children, raised by a single mother, América Griselda Ayes, who worked as a director of housekeeping staff at a Hilton Hotel after she divorced Ferrera’s father, Carlos Gregorio Ferrera.

Ferrera enrolled in a theater program at Northwestern University the same year she appeared in Real Women Have Curves and her first television film, Gotta Kick It Up!—a Disney Channel original movie based on the true story of a Latina middle school dance team. She followed up her strong performances in 2002 with roles in How the Garcia Girls Spent Their Summer and The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, where in playing Carmen Lowell, she delivers a powerful monologue to her stepmother at a dress-fitting.

Ferrera was positively received by audiences, and in 2006, she landed the titular role in a new ABC comedy-drama adapted from a Colombian telenovela called Ugly Betty.

“That was my first job on a television show where I had to play the same character for years,” she told Backstage Magazine. “It was the first time that I thought, ‘Oh, I have to find a process. I have to find a craft to be able to sustain living in this character and evolving this character.’”

From 2006 to 2010, Ferrera played the character of Betty Suarez for 85 episodes. The role earned her the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Television Series, Musical or Comedy; the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Comedy Series; and she became the first Latina woman to win a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a comedy series.

Ferrera has said that Ugly Betty was “maybe the hardest work I’ll ever do in my life,” but that she loved it and her “gut instinct” that the show was going to be a big deal for many people was right.

Just 300 Words

Ferrera has continued to make a name for herself. She voiced Astrid Hofferson in the How to Train Your Dragon series and took to the London stage as Roxie Hart in the musical “Chicago” in 2011. She took on her first producer role for the NBC sitcom Superstore, where she also played the role of Amy, and in 2019, she was credited as an executive producer and director for Gentefied on Netflix, a comedy-drama about three Mexican-American cousins.

In 2023, Ferrera appeared in Barbie, and her monologue went viral.

“Greta and I spent months talking about the ideas of the monologue. It was definitely a collaboration, and that was such a gift from Greta,” Ferrera told Backstage Magazine. “One of the things that came out of those conversations, that I added, was the line, ‘Always be grateful.’ We were just rolling off of each other’s ideas and thoughts. We did that for months, which is crazy, to spend that much time thinking about 300 words.”

Those 300 words had a big impact on audiences. In January, People Magazine reported that a girl as young as age 11 was using the monologue to audition for a theater program. And it wasn’t just young girls who resonated with her words. “I’ve had a lot of moms come to me and say, ‘I was watching with my kids, and afterward they said, “Why were you crying?,”’” Ferrera told People.

The role earned her an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress, and she won The People’s Choice Award for The Movie Performance of the Year as well.

Although she didn’t win the Oscar, she did win praise from acting legend and former Hispanic Network Magazine cover star, Rita Moreno.

“Your powerful Barbie monologue is perhaps the most talked-about moment in the most talked-about movie of the past year,” Moreno said at the 96th Annual Academy Awards. “Your words and the passion with which you delivered them about the most impossible standards females must try to live up to galvanized not only women, but everyone with a pulse.”

Uplifting Voices

Ferrera continues to use her words and her platform to galvanize women and men in the political arena. In 2008, she joined Chelsea Clinton and Amber Tamblyn in leading the Hillblazers, a nationwide activist platform for young and first-time voters supporting Hillary Clinton. She attended the Democratic National Convention in 2012 and 2016, where she spoke to the delegates alongside actress Lena Dunham. She has lent her voice to numerous protests, speaking at the Women’s March in Washington, D.C., in 2017 and the Families Belong Together protest in 2018.

Ferrera has also encouraged Latinos to use their own voices and get involved in her work with organizations like Voto Latino, and even partnered with fellow actress, advocate and friend, Eva Longoria, to create She Se Puede, a digital lifestyle platform designed to motivate Latinas to vote.

Ferrera is now focused on making her feature directorial debut with I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter, based on the Erika L. Sánchez novel.

“I loved this book so much that I met with Erika to get to know her. Then, years later, it came to me as a script written by Linda Yvette Chávez, who I executive produced for her TV show, Gentefied, for Netflix,” Ferrera told Deadline in February.

Telling the coming-of-age story from the perspective of a young Mexican American girl is another example of how Ferrera continues to work for Latina representation in the industry in every role she takes on, in front of the screen or behind the camera.

And while she may not deliver a monologue in her next role as a director, audiences can bet they will still feel Ferrera’s powerful words.

“The opportunity to tell that story for all the other kids who feel that way, all the other bleeding-heart artists out there, is just like such a dream.”

Explore more articles for the Hispanic Community here.

This article was originally published on diversitycomm.net.