Ahead of the curve
Striding with purpose across the Warner Bros. lot on a beautiful spring day, America Ferrera seems every bit the up-and-coming young actress: polished-casual look, sunny disposition, ambition to burn and a new movie to promote. Though still best known for her role in “Real Women Have Curves,” Ferrera is here to talk about her part in the adaptation of the popular tweener novel “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants,” alongside young-gun TV stars Alexis Bledel and Amber Tamblyn.
It is no slight to her considerable presence on screen to say that Ferrera is remarkably more striking than her screen persona lets on, and her amply curvy figure, such a point of discussion in “Real Women” and its promotion, has in the ensuing years sorted itself out nicely. Currently a full-time student at USC, Ferrera admits she had to reluctantly skip a class earlier in the day to make a casting meeting.
Pointing to a small clearing amid the maze of bungalows, sound stages and grassy patches that forms the heart of the Warners complex, she recalls the time a few years ago when she accidentally found herself in the midst of an encampment of trailers for “Ocean’s Eleven.”
“It was my very, very first job ever,” she recalls with bubbly cheer, “a Disney Channel movie. They brought us here for a wardrobe fitting. We were walking to the commissary and I saw this man who was strikingly familiar to me. ‘Mom, do I know that guy?’ ‘No, honey, that’s Brad Pitt.’ ”
The youngest of six kids, Ferrera, who recently turned 21, is the only member of her family born in Los Angeles -- her parents are from Honduras. “I wouldn’t come out until I was where I wanted to be,” she jokes as she drops herself into a seat in the upscale-ish executive dining room.
The four lead roles in “Sisterhood,” which opens June 1, were cast individually, and though the actresses were meant to create a feeling they had known each other their entire lives, they had in actuality just met. To that end, director Ken Kwapis struck on a novel way to get the young women to be comfortable together when they hit Vancouver for filming.
“He gave us $75 each, Canadian dollars, and dropped us off at a vintage shop. This was our rehearsal. ‘I want you guys to shop together.’ We were like, we feel good as far as chemistry goes, but if you want to send us shopping we will go.”
Something must have worked, as Ferrera says the foursome have subsequently become close. She takes in movies with Bledel, poetry readings with Tamblyn, and the three of them went to a high school choral competition for co-star Blake Lively.
Ferrera began acting in school plays and community theater productions when she was in third grade, and when she was 15 her mother allowed her to take acting classes -- but only if she paid for them herself with a waitressing job her mother arranged.
A showcase at the end of the workshop led to her being signed by a small talent agency, which in turn led to a fruitless year of commercial auditions. Sent out on her first movie audition, for the Disney Channel’s “Gotta Kick It Up,” Ferrera finally got a part.
“After a year of nothing but rejection, I booked my first film and then like a month later I booked another film. ‘Real Women’ was just supposed to be a TV movie on HBO -- nobody knew it would go to theaters, and I had no idea what I was getting into.
“The very first time I ever saw myself on screen -- mind you, ‘Gotta Kick It Up’ was still in the editing room -- was when ‘Real Women’ was at Sundance in 2002, with about 400 people. It was just unreal.”
SOURCE OF PRIDE
Ferrera took time off from school for the full-court promotion of “Real Women,” and when relatives in Honduras saw some Latin press she had done in Miami, word filtered back.
“That was exciting for me, to have brought some pride to them. I think jumping into it you don’t know that by default you take on a sort of obligation to represent every part of you. All of a sudden every distinctive feature about you becomes amplified a hundred percent. You’re expected to be the spokesman for all these things -- young girls, Latin girls, curvy women, Hondurans, USC students, whatever.”
Any added responsibilities that come from her ethnicity and other traits are not taken lightly by Ferrera, and she hasn’t shied away from dealing with them head-on.
“I have a very set view of what my goals in this industry are, I’m not just about doing my lines and walking out. As a young kid, my mom worked a lot and we were kind of latchkey kids, so we watched a lot of movies and we watched a lot of TV and a lot of who I am came from what I was inspired or turned off by from what I saw. I can’t deny how much that has shaped me.
“So to feel like I’m a part of that, like I’m part of some other kid’s childhood, of their shaping, I just feel a certain sense of obligation. Whether other people agree with me or not, it’s something I take on for myself. I don’t mind being the spokesperson for things as long as I believe in them.”
She acknowledges the upside of being Latina in Hollywood when she playfully says, “I have that many less people to contend with when those roles come up. It’s always the same girls in the auditions. I mean, how many kind-of-known young Latina actresses are there?”
Turning slightly more serious for a moment, she also addresses the downside.
“It’s flattering for people to think of me as a representation of Hispanic young girls, but it’s hard to get away from that. It can be a blessing and a curse at the same time. If I wasn’t who I was, I wouldn’t have gotten ‘Real Women.’ If I wasn’t a young Hispanic girl with a distinct physical feature at that time in my life, that would not have been a possibility. So kind of what I thought was stopping me from getting roles was the only thing that helped me break out. How’s that for poetic?”
For now, with one year left in college (her major is international relations), her main goal is simply getting through each day and trying to find a balance between school and career.
For example, Ferrera relates that while shooting a small part for the upcoming “Lords of Dogtown” she was unable to partake in the good-times, hanging-out atmosphere.
“When I could be on set, having conversations and making friends, I was in my trailer during breaks doing my homework,” she says, her voice tinged by a small touch of frustration. “Right now my life is split right down the middle. I’m not completely in one world or the other, and that’s a hard place to be.”
