America Ferrera

Chelsea

The first thing I noticed when I met America Ferrera was how warm, funny, and honest she is. We were in Nevada at a campaign event for my mom. It was 2008, six years after her powerful role in the independent film Real Women Have Curves, three years after The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, and one year after she had won her first Emmy for starring in the TV show Ugly Betty. She told her story—the story of a first-generation American whose parents had moved to the United States from Honduras to give her opportunities that changed her life. She talked candidly about how hard it was at times being one of six kids to an immigrant mother and relying on free lunch at school to eat. She spoke about her certainty that she—as a woman of color, as the daughter of immigrants—needed to use her platform to help other people build a more just, more inclusive, and kinder world. The way she saw it, there was no better way to build that world than by participating in politics. We were on the road together a lot during that campaign, and before long, we had formed what I knew would be a lifelong friendship.

HILLARY

I also met America during that campaign as she traveled around the country for me. She’s always struck me as a well-named, vibrant example of our country.

America started acting when she was just seven years old. She starred in her school productions of Hamlet—what I wouldn’t give to go back in time and see that!—and Oliver! Her mother worried about America and tried as hard as she could to steer her daughter away from acting. But America knew where her passion and talents were. “My dream was to be an actress,” America said later. “And it’s true that I never saw anyone who looked like me in television or in films, and sure, my family and friends and teachers all constantly warned me that people like me didn’t make it in Hollywood. But I was an American. I had been taught to believe that anyone could achieve anything—regardless of the color of their skin, the fact that my parents immigrated from Honduras, the fact that I had no money. I didn’t need my dream to be easy, I just needed it to be possible.”

After high school, America enrolled at the University of Southern California, where she studied theater and international relations. Before long, she dropped out to focus on acting (though she would come back to finish her bachelor’s degree years later, in 2013, and I will never forget how proud she and her family were that day). In some ways, her mother was right to worry; America felt the racism and sexism of Hollywood constantly. Instead of conforming to someone else’s idea of who she should be, she carved out her own path. She took on roles she could be proud of, and brought her whole, authentic self to every project.

That didn’t mean it was easy, though. America once described the experience of standing onstage at the Emmys for Ugly Betty: “I’d imagined being in this room, clutching this statue ever since watching my first Emmy broadcast at seven years old. Now I was actually at the podium and accepting the award on national television. It was 2007, and I was twenty-three.… This should have been a moment of sublime celebration. But it wasn’t. I can’t remember the words that came out of my mouth, but I do remember, clear as day, the words that ran through my mind: ‘Who do you think you are? You don’t belong here. No one here thinks you deserve this. Hurry up and get off the stage.’ ” It took nearly a decade of hard work and therapy for her to finally beat her “nagging internal critic.”

“I am just one of millions of people who have been told that in order to fulfill my dreams, in order to contribute my talents to the world, I have to resist the truth of who I am. I for one am ready to stop resisting and to start existing as my full and authentic self.… My identity is not my obstacle. My identity is my superpower. Because the truth is, I am what the world looks like.”

—AMERICA FERRERA

As America has worked to silence that critic, she has spoken openly about her struggles with self-doubt and how our politics has fed that doubt, leading her to question her place in her country. “Some of us don’t have the privilege of living our lives outside of politics,” she said later. “People make decisions every single day that impact my life—the air I breathe, my ability to walk down the street and be safe, how much money I make for the job I do, whether I can choose what happens to my body.”

Politics is personal; America understands that deeply and feels a responsibility to share her story and her platform to help enfranchise and protect people—particularly immigrants, people of color, and women. She’s partnered with Voto Latino and other organizations to expand civic engagement and participation, and campaigned for candidates she believes in. She refuses to apologize for her voice or her advocacy.

America is always looking toward the future, asking herself what she can do to help build the world she wants to live in while confronting injustices. After the 2016 election, she and her husband, filmmaker Ryan Williams, founded a group called Harness that works with other artists to encourage people to vote, and to tell untold and important stories. She also supports other activists, including our friend Elsa Collins who, since 2018, has led multiple bus trips to San Diego and Tijuana to bring desperately needed supplies to families on both sides of the border, including children separated from their parents.

In 2017, America courageously shared her story of being sexually assaulted at nine years old, and joined millions of women who were raising their hands to say “Me too.” She became a founding member of TIME’S UP, an organization that emerged from the ongoing and long-overdue global reckoning around the abuse and misbehavior of powerful men. America and others from the entertainment industry came together to talk about what they could do to create change for women everywhere. Today, TIME’S UP and the TIME’S UP Legal Defense Fund are supporting women fighting for justice from the entertainment industry to the restaurant industry to the technology sector.

In politics and in her own life, America is constantly pushing herself to do things that scare her. In 2016, she decided to do a triathlon. She shut out the negative voices in her head that told her she was “the fat kid, the procrastinator, the quitter,” and started training. “Sensing my own self-doubt, I doubled down, announcing my triathlon plan on every social media platform I have,” she wrote later. By the time she got in the water for her first ocean swim, she had developed a mantra: “You are a warrior, you are strong, and sharks are not real.” On the day of the race she achieved her two goals: Finish, and stay positive. True to form, as she passed other athletes she cheered them on, explaining that her only goal was to yell louder than the voices in their heads. When she finished, she said, “I finally got my answer to that question: Who do you think you are? I am whoever I say I am.” As an actress, as an advocate, as a writer, as an athlete, and as a mother, America has proved again and again that it’s a gutsy thing to own our own story.