HEY LUPE!
QV Shows Latina Actress Lupe Ontiveros Some Respect.
Interview by Luther Orrick-Guzman

FEW LATINA ACTRESSES have achieved the level of success that Lupe Ontiveros has. While she’s not necessarily the household name that other actresses like Jennifer Lopez, Salma Hayek and Penelope Cruz are, what Lupe has over these younger starlets is longevity. Over they years, she has worked her way up through role after role, carefully crafting a body of film and television work that’s filled with a long list memorable characters while. And at the same time, she has earned the respect of critics and audiences everywhere.

As with many Hollywood actresses, Lupe has definitely had to pay her dues. A quick, simple look on IMDb.com reveals that her screen acting career goes back as far as 1976 when she played a maid in an episode of “Charlie’s Angels.” Her later TV roles reads like a who’s who of shows: “Alice,” “Eight is Enough,” “Soap,” “Hill Street Blues,” “Who’s the Boss?” “Veronica’s Closet,” and “Resurrection Boulevard.”

But it’s her movie roles that have really put Lupe on the map. She’s been in films like “The World’s Greatest Lover,” “Zoot Suit,” “El Norte,” “The Goonies,” “Born in East LA,” and “Mi Familia.” But things really took off for Lupe after her memorable role portraying Yolanda Saldivar in “Selena.” After that, Lupe landed higher-profile roles in films like “As Good As It Gets,” with Jack Nicholson, and the Latina girl-power film “Luminarias.” She then landed an award-winning performance in the hit independent film “Chuck & Buck.” Just last year, she turned in yet another great performance in “Real Women Have Curves” and now she’s back again in the film “Passionada.”

Lupe looks back fondly on her early roles—even her very first role in “The World’s Greatest Lover” in which she played a hooker, of all things!

After that, she reminisces, “My next significant role was in ‘El Norte.’ I brought from home the molcajete, the chili, my own masa, and I was making tortillas de harina on the set!”

She adds, “I was much younger at the time, but I was portraying an older woman. I started my whole film career playing older roles. I’ve always enjoyed playing older roles.”

Over the years, Lupe has learned that when something in a script doesn’t agree with her, she doesn’t necessarily have to stay quiet. She explains, “Many times, an actress or actor won’t take a chance and speak up about a line that could possibly make it better. But for me, there was this case where I wanted to have a line where I would tell my daughter-in-law that it was okay to give herself the chance to love again, so I talked to the writer and the director about it. Lots of times, an actor has to take that kind of initiative where you bridge the relationships of characters in a film where there is no conclusion, no finality.”

With so much experience in acting and in life in general, I as Lupe what is the most valuable lesson she’s learned in life. Lupe pauses, then responds: “I don’t know. The longer I stay on this earth, the more I appreciate life, I think. I’m thankful that I’ve lived my life just the way I’ve wanted to, although there is a lot left to be explored. Right now, as these films come in and I put my thoughts into words, it’s a great experience to say what I’m thinking, what I’m feeling—and I’m saying it for myself, I’m not saying it for anybody else. I would say that every role that I do, I do it with passion. It is therapeutic if it’s truthful coming from a part of you deep inside. There are a lot of actors who can’t—they don’t know how to go inside—they just go through the motions, the exchange of dialogue, and there’s not a truthful word in there.”

Lupe says that the hardest part about acting is that you’re interpreting somebody else’s lines. She says, “You have to make them your own and then to convince an audience.”

Not being convincing is one thing Ontiveros has never had to worry about. From “Zoot Suit” to “Passionada,”she always delivers the goods.

“Oh thank you!” she says when I give her this compliment. “We’ve gotta play the characters of life in life itself and we can’t all be pretty, and we can’t all be sweet and good, we have to have a balance. And those parts are the juiciest—the ones that counterbalance.”

She continues, “Every role that I play—no matter how simplistic—is a challenge for me. I always try to re-invent the maid because I’m always playing these maids. The ideal role will come when it’s meant to. I would like to be remembered very simply: ‘Here lies someone that came by and tried to make a difference,’ that’s all.”