America Ferrera facts for kids

Quick facts for kids America Ferrera
Ferrera in 2023
Born	America Georgina Ferrera (1984-04-18) April 18, 1984 (age 40) Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Alma mater	University of Southern California
Occupation	Actress
Years active	2002–present
Spouse(s)	Ryan Piers Williams ​ (m. 2011)​
Children	2
Awards	Full list

America Georgina Ferrera (/fəˈrɛərə/; born April 18, 1984) is an American actress, director and television producer. She has received numerous accolades, including a Primetime Emmy Award, a Golden Globe Award, and a Screen Actors Guild Award, in addition to a nomination for an Academy Award. In 2007, Time named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world and in 2023, she was named in BBC's 100 Women list.

Ferrera developed an interest in acting at a young age, performing in several stage productions at her school. She made her feature film debut in 2002 with the comedy-drama Real Women Have Curves, earning praise for her performance. She achieved modest success early in her career with roles in films such as the comedy-dramas Gotta Kick It Up! (2002) and The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (2005). She garnered further critical acclaim and recognition for her starring role as Betty Suarez in the ABC comedy-drama series Ugly Betty (2006–2010). For her performance, she won a Golden Globe Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, and a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series, the first for a Latina woman in the category.

Ferrera's other film roles include the drama The Dry Land (2010), the romantic comedy Our Family Wedding (2010), the crime drama End of Watch (2012), and the fantasy comedy Barbie (2023), which earned her a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. She also voiced Astrid Hofferson in the How to Train Your Dragon franchise (2010–2019) and co-produced and starred in the NBC workplace comedy series Superstore (2015–2021).

Early life and education

Ferrera, the youngest of six children, was born in Los Angeles, California. Her parents, América Griselda Ayes and Carlos Gregorio Ferrera, were originally from Tegucigalpa, Honduras, and immigrated to the United States in the mid-1970s. Ferrera has stated that she has Lenca ancestry. Her mother worked as the director of the housekeeping staff for one of the Hilton Hotels, and stressed the importance of higher education. When Ferrera was 7, her parents divorced and her father returned to Honduras. Ferrera was estranged from her father when he died there in 2010.

Ferrera was raised in the Woodland Hills section of Los Angeles, where she attended Calabash Street Elementary School, George Ellery Hale Middle School and El Camino Real High School. At age seven she played a small role in a school production of Hamlet, and when she was 10 she played the Artful Dodger in Oliver!.

While at El Camino High School, she took acting lessons. She entered the University of Southern California (USC) on a presidential scholarship, double-majoring in theatre and international relations. She dropped out to focus on her acting career, but completed her bachelor's degree in May 2013.

Career

Debut and early roles (2002–2005)

In July 2002, Ferrera appeared in her first television film, Gotta Kick It Up! for The Disney Channel. While at a theatre program at Northwestern University that same year, she made her feature movie debut in Real Women Have Curves. Ferrera followed this with roles in television (Touched by an Angel). She also appeared in the movie Plainsong, based on the novel by Kent Haruf, which also featured Aidan Quinn and Rachel Griffiths. Ferrera played a pregnant teenager, Victoria Roubideaux, who has been kicked out of her mother's house; she is taken in by two kindly brothers who live alone on a farm. In the 2005 film How the Garcia Girls Spent Their Summer, she starred as Bianca, a 17-year-old third-generation Mexican-American who is disgusted with the boys in her neighborhood but finds romance with a boy from a neighboring town. In 2006, she appeared in the short film 3:52, which won the Audience Award at the San Diego Women Film Festival. Later that year, she featured in the movie Steel City, which received nominations at the Film Independent Spirit Awards and the Sundance Film Festival. In December 2005, she appeared in the Off-Broadway play Dog Sees God: Confessions of a Teenage Blockhead, directed by Trip Cullman.

Breakthrough and rise to fame (2006–2010)

Ferrera at the 2010 Voice Awards

In 2006, Ferrera landed the lead role of Betty Suarez in ABC's new comedy-drama Ugly Betty, an adaptation of the successful Colombian telenovela Yo soy Betty, la fea (1999–2001), in which Ferrera portrays a girl whom her peers find extremely unattractive, thus the series title. As Betty Suarez, Ferrera wears braces, has bushy eyebrows and a disheveled wig, and cosmetics and clothing intended to downplay her own looks, in contrast to most of the "glammed up" characters; Ferrera herself invented the term "Bettification" to describe the process of creating her onscreen persona. In 2007, Ferrera won numerous accolades for her performance in the series; she also won the "triple crown" for acting in television; she won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Television Series Musical or Comedy, the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Comedy Series, and the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series, becoming the first Latina woman to win the Outstanding Lead Actress Award.

In the wake of her Golden Globe win, Ferrera was congratulated by Hilda L. Solis in the United States House of Representatives and was commended for "helping to break down stereotypes and provide a role model for young Latinas". Time included Ferrera in their 2007 list of the 100 most influential people in the world. Also in 2007, Ferrera won the Imagen Foundation's Creative Achievement Award. Ferrera starred as Carmen in the 2005 film The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, and reprised the role in 2008's The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2. Among other film work, she voice the role of Astrid in the hit animated film How to Train Your Dragon (2010). She also appeared in The Dry Land which premiered at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival and ran at the Dallas International Film Festival where it won the top prize in the Filmmaker Award for Best Narrative Feature.

Post-Ugly Betty projects and Superstore (2011–2022)

Ferrera made her London stage debut on November 7, 2011, playing Roxie Hart in the musical Chicago in London's West End. In 2012, Ferrera was featured in the four-hour documentary Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide, which premiered on PBS October 1 and 2, 2012. The series introduces women and girls living in very difficult circumstances and struggling to challenge them. The Half the Sky PBS TV series is produced by Show of Force along with Fugitive Films. Ferrera starred alongside David Cross and Julia Stiles in the dark comedy It's a Disaster, which premiered at the 2012 Los Angeles Film Festival and had a limited commercial release on April 12, 2013.

Ferrera in 2014

On May 17, 2013, ABC announced that Ferrera was cast in a limited-run telenovela titled Pedro & Maria, a modern-day take on Romeo and Juliet set in Washington, D.C. The series had been in development at MTV since 2010 with Ferrera serving as a director on the project, which would have interactive participation online content from viewers. ABC later decided not to move forward with the series. On March 16, 2015, Ferrera was added to the cast of the upcoming NBC sitcom Superstore, portraying Amy, a 10-year veteran floor supervisor at a superstore named Cloud 9. In addition to her main role, Ferrera also had co-production duties for the series. After NBC had initially announced a sixth season of the series, the network revealed on February 28, 2020, that Ferrera would be departing the series at the end of the fifth season citing new projects and spending time with family. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic shutting down Superstore's fifth season with one episode left to film, her departure was delayed into season 6 in order to give her character's arc a proper closure. On March 10, 2021, NBC announced that Ferrera would return for the show's one-hour series finale.

In February 2019, it was announced that Ferrera would be credited as an executive producer and director for the Netflix comedy-drama series Gentefied. The series premiered on February 21, 2020.

Further projects and Barbie (2023–present)

In February 2021, it was announced that Ferrera would make her feature length directorial debut with I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter, based on the young adult novel of the same name by Erika L. Sánchez. Adapted by Linda Yvette Chávez, the film will be a co-production with Netflix, Anonymous Content, Aevitas Creative Management and MACRO.

In 2023, Ferrera appeared in the film Barbie, for which she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.

In February 2024 it was announced that Ferrera would star in and executive produce an Amazon Prime Video series about artist Ana Mendieta. The work is based on a book by Robert Katz, to be scripted by Cherise Castro Smith and co-executive produced by Amazon MGM Studios and Plan B Entertainment.

Activism

Ferrera has been politically active. During the 2008 presidential primaries, she, alongside Chelsea Clinton and Amber Tamblyn, led the Hillblazers organization in support of Hillary Clinton's campaign.

Ferrera attended both the 2012 Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina, and the 2016 Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. At the 2016 convention, she addressed the delegates as a speaker, sharing the stage with Lena Dunham.

Ferrera with Hillary Clinton in 2008

Ferrera has been active, through her involvement with the organization Voto Latino and by appearing on various news programs, in getting Latinos in the United States to vote. Ferrera also works with Eva Longoria to co-host She Se Puede, a digital lifestyle platform which encourages voting within the Latina community. As a continuation of their work prior to the 2020 presidential campaign, Ferrera and Longoria recently held a textbanking event with VoteRiders to educate voters about Georgia's strict Voter ID laws ahead of the Georgia Senate runoff.

Ferrera was the opening speaker for the Women's March on Washington on January 21, 2017.

Ferrera spoke at the Families Belong Together protest on June 30, 2018.

Personal life and other ventures

Ferrera with Ryan Piers Williams in October 2010

Ferrera first met actor, director, and writer Ryan Piers Williams when he cast her in a student film at USC in 2005. The couple got engaged in June 2010, and married on June 27, 2011. On January 1, 2018, Ferrera and Williams revealed that they were expecting their first child. She announced on her Instagram page on May 29, 2018, that she had given birth that month to a boy, Sebastian. On May 4, 2020, Ferrera gave birth to a girl, Lucia. On June 27, 2020, Ferrera acknowledged the couple's fifteenth anniversary since becoming a couple.

Ferrera was a guest narrator at Disney's Candlelight Processional at Walt Disney World in 2015. In 2018, her edited anthology of stories, American Like Me: Reflections on Life Between Cultures, was published by Gallery Publishing Group. In April 2019, Ferrera gave a TEDTalk entitled "My Identity is a Superpower". In July 2020, Ferrera was announced as an investor in a primarily female group that was awarded a Los Angeles-based franchise in the National Women's Soccer League. The new team, since unveiled as Angel City FC, started playing in 2022.

Filmography

Key

Denotes works that have not yet been released

Film

America Ferrera in 2021

Year	Title	Role	Notes
2002	Real Women Have Curves	Ana García
2004	Darkness Minus Twelve	Luiza	Short film
2005	How the Garcia Girls Spent Their Summer	Blanca Garcia
	The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants	Carmen Lowell
	Lords of Dogtown	Thunder Monkey
	3:52	Kate
2006	Steel City	Amy Barnes
2007	Muertas	Rebecca	Short film; also executive producer
	Towards Darkness (Hacia la oscuridad)	Luiza	Also executive producer
	Under the Same Moon	Martha
2008	The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2	Carmen Lowell
	Tinker Bell	Fawn	Direct-to-video; voice role
2010	The Dry Land	Sarah	Also executive producer
	Our Family Wedding	Lucia Ramirez
	How to Train Your Dragon	Astrid Hofferson	Voice role
	Legend of the Boneknapper Dragon		Short film; voice role
2011	Book of Dragons
	Gift of the Night Fury
2012	It's a Disaster	Hedy Galili
	End of Watch	Officer Orozco
	Half the Sky	Herself	Documentary film
2014	Cesar Chavez	Helen Chávez
	X/Y	Silvia	Also producer
	How to Train Your Dragon 2	Astrid Hofferson	Voice role
	Dawn of the Dragon Racers		Short film; voice role
2016	Special Correspondents	Brigida
2019	How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World	Astrid Hofferson	Voice role
	How to Train Your Dragon: Homecoming		Short film; voice role
2023	Barbie	Gloria
	Dumb Money	Jennifer Campbell
2025	Elio	Olga Solis (voice)	In production
TBA	The Lost Bus	Mary Ludwig	Filming

Television

Year	Title	Role	Notes
2002–08, 2010–11	Independent Lens	Herself / Host	Seasons 5–9, 12–13 112 episodes
2002	Touched by an Angel	Charlee	Episode: "The Word"
	Gotta Kick It Up!	Yolanda "Yoli" Vargas	Disney Channel Original Movie
2004	Plainsong	Victoria Roubideaux	Hallmark Hall of Fame movie
	CSI: Crime Scene Investigation	April Perez	Episode: "Harvest"
2006–10	Ugly Betty	Betty Suarez	Lead role; 85 episodes
2011	Handy Manny	Graciela Morales	Episode: "Snow Problem"; voice
2011–13	The Good Wife	Natalie Flores	4 episodes
2012–18	DreamWorks Dragons	Astrid Hofferson	Main cast; voice
2014	Years of Living Dangerously	Herself	Episode: "Winds of Change"
2015	Last Week Tonight with John Oliver	Maternity	Episode: "Paid Family Leave"
	Inside Amy Schumer	Mena	Episode: "80s Ladies"
2015–21	Superstore	Amelia "Amy" Sosa	Main cast, 103 episodes; also co-producer and director of four episodes
2016	Lip Sync Battle	Herself	Episode: "America Ferrera vs. Amber Tamblyn"
2017	Curb Your Enthusiasm	Vanessa Nadal (Lin's wife)	Episode: "The Shucker"
2020	Gentefied	Andy Cruz	Episode: "The Mural"; also executive producer and director
2022	WeCrashed	Elishia Kennedy	2 episodes
TBA	What If..?	Ranger Morales	In production; voice

Web

Music video

Awards and nominations

See also

In Spanish: America Ferrera para niños

In Spanish: America Ferrera para niños

• List of actors with Academy Award nominations
• List of Hispanic Academy Award winners and nominees