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Great Lives from History: Latinos, 2nd Edition

Lupe Ontiveros

by Mary E. Markland

American actor and activist

Although relegated throughout her career to small, supporting roles, mostly stereotypical in nature, Ontiveros provided a constant presence as a Latina in entertainment and a role model for Latino actors who follow in her footsteps.

Latino heritage: Mexico

Born: September 17, 1942; El Paso, Texas

Died: July 26, 2012; Whittier, California

Also known as: Guadalupe Ontiveros; Guadalupe Moreno

Area of achievement: Acting; theater; social issues

EARLY LIFE

Guadalupe Ontiveros (gwah-duh-LEW-pay ahn-tih-VEH-rohs) was born Guadalupe Moreno in El Paso, Texas, on September 17, 1942, to poor Mexican immigrants. Ontiveros’s father, Juan Moreno, and mother, Lucita Castanon, sold sombreros and shoes out of the bed of a Ford pickup truck until they saved enough money to start their own tortilla stand. Eventually Ontiveros’s parents opened a Mexican restaurant, which later grew to become two El Paso restaurants and a tortilla factory.

Lupe Ontiveros (Festival Internacional de Cine en Guadalajara via Wikimedia Commons)

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Ontiveros was the fifth child born to Juan and Lucita; the first four children died in infancy before Ontiveros was born, largely because of extreme poverty and insufficient medical care. Ontiveros was named for the Virgen de Guadalupe, as her parents’ thanks for her being born healthy and surviving childbirth. A lover of her family-like Latino community in El Paso, Ontiveros thrived in her family’s restaurants, and she worked with her parents in their tortilla factory before leaving for college. After graduating from El Paso High School in 1960, Ontiveros attended Texas Woman’s University in Denton, Texas. Never having been away from home before, Ontiveros was isolated and homesick, and she begged to come home, but her mother insisted that she stay and complete her education. Ontiveros graduated with a bachelor’s degree in social work and returned to El Paso, where she was employed as a social worker until marrying Elias Ontiveros and moving to California in 1968.

For sixteen years, Lupe Ontiveros continued her employment as a social worker until, disillusioned and unhappy in her work, she saw an advertisement in the newspaper calling for film extras. Curious, Ontiveros tried out for a part, became an extra, and discovered a passion for acting. Still employed as a social worker by day, Ontiveros began appearing at Nosotros, a Los Angeles community theater, by night, where she perfected her skills and gained increasing recognition as an actor. In 1976, Ontiveros appeared as a maid on ABC’s television phenomenon Charlie’s Angels.

LIFE’S WORK

Ontiveros worked as one of the founding members of the Los Angeles Latino Theater Company and appeared in small, supporting roles throughout the late 1970’s: as a prostitute in The World’s Greatest Lover (1977) and as a maid in Neil Simon’s California Suite (1978). The critically acclaimed play Zoot Suit (1978), by Luis Miguel Valdez, marked a major turning point for Ontiveros, who for two years performed on stage in Los Angeles and in New York as Dolores, the first Chicano mother character to appear on Broadway. In 1981, the highly successful film Zoot Suit was released, gaining Ontiveros national attention for her performance.

In 1983, Ontiveros received critical recognition for her portrayal of Nacha in the independent film El norte (1983), directed by Gregory Nava. Ontiveros plays a maid who becomes surrogate mother to a young immigrant girl who has just arrived in the United States from Guatemala. Ontiveros has acknowledged repeatedly that Nacha is the favorite role of her career and that El norte is her greatest film because it best captures the life of the poor Latino immigrant.

Her performance in the blockbuster Goonies (1985) remains for many filmgoers Ontiveros's most memorable role, as the high-strung maid Rosalita. In 1987, Ontiveros was unforgettable as Rudy's mother in Cheech Marin's hugely successful Born in East L.A. Appearing as Camilla in the horror film Dolly Dearest (1992) and as Irene Sanchez in My Family (1995) with Jennifer Lopez, Ontiveros enjoyed continuing success. Ontiveros's most challenging role came in 1997, however, when she played Yolanda Saldivar, the woman who went from fan club to killer of Tejano singer Selena in the enormously popular film Selena. In addition, Ontiveros worked alongside Jack Nicholson as Nora Manning in the Academy Award-winning film As Good as It Gets (1997).

After twenty-five years of acting in films and plays and on television, Ontiveros received her first role as a white woman, a theater director named Beverly, in the film Chuck and Buck (2000), for which she was nominated Best Supporting Actress at the Independent Spirit Awards. Ontiveros's portrayal of Carmen Garcia, a controlling reactionary Latina mother, in the independent film Real Women Have Curves (2002), earned her a Special Jury Prize at the prestigious Sundance Film Festival.

Ontiveros has appeared in dozens of television series, notably Veronica’s Closet in 1997 as Louisa, for which she was awarded an American Latino Media Arts Award in 1998. Ontiveros starred as grandmother Magdalena in the series Greetings from Tucson (2002-2003), and she was nominated for an Emmy Award for playing mother-in-law Juanita in the series Desperate Housewives (2004-2005). In 2007, Ontiveros appeared as Adelfa with George Lopez in Tortilla Heaven, and in 2010, Ortiz starred as Momma Cecelia in Our Family Wedding. In 2011 she voiced the character of Mrs. Cortez in the animated film Beverly Hills Chihuahua 2, and made several guest appearances in the series Los Americans, Rob, and Common Law.

Ontiveros lived in California with her husband and family until her death in 2012, at the age of sixty-nine, from liver cancer.

SIGNIFICANCE

Ontiveros is significant because her long career in the public eye provides a visible mirror image of the inequality and racism Latinos have encountered in their struggle to succeed. There is a direct correlation between Ontiveros's inability to access popular roles in film and Latinos' denial by mainstream American society. When Ontiveros first began acting professionally in the mid-1970’s, very few opportunities were available to her as a Latina actor, unlike her Caucasian counterparts, who, though often less talented, educated, beautiful, and skillful, nonetheless obtained superior roles in films, plays, and television. Likewise, in American society at large, Latinos often found themselves locked into inferior positions professionally, victims of detrimental stereotyping, relentless marginalization, and pervasive bigotry.

Ontiveros and Typecasting of Latina Actors

Lupe Ontiveros has played the role of a maid or nanny on television or in films more than 150 times. Although she has auditioned for a wide variety of acting roles for decades, she has been continually typecast in housekeeper positions, with an occasional role as a prostitute.

Additionally, all of the maids portrayed by Ontiveros in her acting career have been deliberately designated with Mexican names, further perpetuating the stereotype so often portrayed by Latina women in the mainstream media.

Ontiveros, who speaks perfect English, devoid of any trace of a Spanish accent, has found that if she speaks proper English during an audition, she will either be denied the part in question or the director will demand that she speak broken English with a Spanish accent, the thicker the better. Finally, after decades spent performing stereotyped housekeeper roles, in 2000 director Miguel Arteta offered Ontiveros a role playing a white woman named Barbara in the film Chuck and Buck. Ontiveros was so overjoyed to be offered a nonstereotyped ethnic role forthe first time in her life that she accepted the part, sight unseen, without even reading the script. In 2004, because she had portrayed repeatedly the role of a maid in plays, films, and television, Ontiveros was chosen to narrate Maid in America, a documentary examining the social, political, and racial aspects of Latina women working as maids in the United States.

For decades, Ontiveros was allowed to play only working-class characters on screen, inasmuch as Latinos were presumed by white audiences to occupy blue-collar positions, regardless of qualifications. In later years, however, Ontiveros gradually assumed alternative roles in films, while modern Latina actors such as Lopez, Salma Hayek, and America Ferrera have assumed dramatic leading roles, benefitting greatly from Ontiveros’s indefatigable efforts to achieve equality in the media for Latino actors.

Citation Types

Type

Format

MLA 9th

Markland, Mary E. "Lupe Ontiveros." Great Lives from History: Latinos, 2nd Edition, edited by Trudy Mercadal, et al., Salem Press, 2021. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=GLLatin2e_0399.

APA 7th

Markland, M. E. (2021). Lupe Ontiveros. In T. Mercadal, C. Tafolla & M. P. Cotera (Eds.), Great Lives from History: Latinos, 2nd Edition. Salem Press.

CMOS 17th

Markland, Mary E. "Lupe Ontiveros." Edited by Trudy Mercadal, Carmen Tafolla & Martha P. Cotera. Great Lives from History: Latinos, 2nd Edition. Hackensack: Salem Press, 2021. Accessed September 20, 2024. online.salempress.com.

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