Discover the Best Books Written by America Ferrera

America Georgina Ferrera is an American actress. Born in Los Angeles to Honduran parents, 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. Ferrera has won an Emmy Award, a Golden Globe Award, and a Screen Actors Guild Award, among others.

Ferrera achieved modest success early in her career with roles in films such as the Disney original film Gotta Kick It Up! (2002) and the drama The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (2005); the latter earned her the Imagen Award Best Actress and her first nomination at the ALMA Awards. She undertook television roles, including the eponymous role on the ABC comedy-drama Ugly Betty (2006–2010). 

She was praised for playing the protagonist of the series, Betty Suarez, and won Best Actress Awards in 2007 from the Golden Globe Awards, the Screen Actors Guild Awards, and the Primetime Emmy Award, the first for a Latina woman in the category. Ferrera's other notable film roles include the drama The Dry Land (2010), the romantic comedy Our Family Wedding (2010), and the crime drama End of Watch (2012). 

She provided the voice of Astrid Hofferson in the How to Train Your Dragon franchise, including the three films and the television series Dreamworks Dragons. She co-produced and starred as Amy Sosa in the NBC comedy series Superstore (2015–2021). Time named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2007.

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. In July 2002, Ferrera appeared in her first television movie; 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.