In the history of Hollywood, is America Ferrera the only young actress to have launched a successful career by hitching herself to the word “ugly”?
A 27-year-old Californian actress with no formal training, Ferrera made her name as the star of Ugly Betty, the hit American television comedy series which followed her frumpy character’s unlikely rise at a New York fashion magazine. It ran for four years and won her a Screen Actors Guild award, an Emmy and a Golden Globe.
Ferrera, who took her first acting jobs while reading International Relations at the University of Southern California, had already tackled the issue of body image as Ana Garcia, a Mexican-American girl rebelling against an overbearing, weight-obsessed mother in the 2002 film Real Women Have Curves. She was only 17 when she landed the role, and her performance won her the Special Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival in 2002.
“I don’t think I meant to challenge an industry as a whole,” she says, sitting in the empty auditorium at New York’s Ambassador Theatre where she is rehearsing for her new role, as murderous showgirl Roxie Hart in the London production of Chicago. “I didn’t see any fear in playing Betty.” READ MORE
