America Ferrera

America Ferrera met her future husband, actor and director Ryan Piers Williams, at the University of Southern California; he had cast her in a student film. They got engaged in June 2010, and married on June 27, 2011.

Having a keen interest in politics, she attended the 2012 Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina, and supported President Barack Obama's re-election campaign. Her involvement with the organization Voto Latino helped her to get Latinos in the US to cast their vote. She also spoke at the 2016 Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, and was the opening speaker for the Women's March in Washington in January 2017.

She is an ambassador for ‘Save the Children’, and traveled to India to meet the children of sex workers and spread awareness about the destructions caused by sex trafficking.

America Georgine Ferrera was born on April 18, 1984, in Los Angeles, California, to América Griselda Ayes and Carlos Gregorio. She has five elder siblings. Her Honduran parents, who had migrated to the USA in the mid-1970s, were originally from Tegucigalpa, Honduras.

Her mother was the director of housekeeping, in one of the Hilton Hotels. America was just seven when her parents divorced, and her father returned to Honduras. He died there in 2010. Ferrera was not close to her father and was estranged from him at the time of his death.

As a young girl she disliked her first name and preferred that people call her by her middle name, ‘Georgine’.

She grew up with her siblings in the Woodland Hills, Los Angeles. She studied in Calabash Street Elementary School and later went to George Ellery Hale Middle School before shifting to El Camino Real High School, where she took acting lessons and did odd jobs to pay her fees.

She became interested in acting when she was very young, and landed a small role in a school play ‘Hamlet’ at the age of seven. When she was ten, she played the role of Artful Dodger in ‘Oliver!’ When Ferrera was in her third grade, she performed in the play ‘Romeo and Juliet’, and that was when she realized that she would pursue a career in acting.

Early in her career, America Ferrera took up small roles in films like the television movie ‘Gotta Kick It Up!’ in 2002. That year, during a theatre program at the Northwestern University, she made her feature film debut in ‘Real Women Have Curves’.

In 2005, she starred in the film ‘Lords of Dogtown’, and ‘How the Garcia Girls Spent Their Summer’, where she portrayed Bianca, a 17-year-old third-generation Mexican-American girl. The same year, she was featured in ‘The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants’ and won a best actress award and her first nomination at the ALMA Awards.

She was then cast in the Off-Broadway play ‘Dog Sees God: Confessions of a Teenage Blockhead’, directed by Trip Cullman.

In 2006, she landed the lead role in the comedy TV series ‘Ugly Betty’, which she continued playing till 2010. ‘Ugly Betty’ brought her major success and enhanced her status in the entertainment industry. She became a star thereafter.

Riding on her success, she appeared in some notable films like ‘The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2’ in 2008, ‘The Dry Land’, and the romantic comedy ‘Our Family Wedding’ in 2010.

America Ferrera’s performance in the HBO film ‘Real Women Have Curves’ earned her numerous accolades and awards. In 2005, she tasted major success for ‘The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants’, which garnered her several awards and nominations.

For her brilliant performance in ‘Ugly Betty’, Ferrera was congratulated by Congresswoman Hilda L. Solis for "helping to break down stereotypes and provide a role model for young Latinas".