The recently released heist film Ladrón que Roba a Ladrón exemplifies how the winds are shifting for Spanish-speaking actors. A Lionsgate and Panamax co-production, Ladrón features a number of actors from telenovelas across South America. The film is in Spanish and is doing well. "Lionsgate has this formula for distributing Spanish films with English subtitles, and the film has far exceeded expectations on revenues," says Lidia Pires, one of the film's stars. "I think this is sort of the opening of the gate. It's really going to be bringing in a lot more opportunities for Latino actors who only speak Spanish." The bulk of Pires' theatrical work has been in English, while most of her commercials have been in Spanish. "I cross over all the time," she says, adding, "I consider myself lucky. It's not exactly easy, but people are doing it more and more. There are more opportunities."
Of course, films like Ladrón are by no means the only work available to Spanish-speaking actors. Through avenues such as Spanish-language commercials, voiceovers, and telenovelas, an actor can get a lot of employment. When he's not appearing in series such as Desperate Housewives, My Name Is Earl, and The Unit, veteran character actor Alejandro Patino has earned income by reading issues of La Opinión for a telephone reader program produced by the Braille Institute. "They recommend you do about two hours a week, but I usually find a little more time than that," Patino says. "It helps my Spanish get better."
If it seems unusual that a fully bilingual, native Spanish speaker would need to keep his Spanish fine-tuned, it shouldn't. Patino, a California native, has spent his entire life in the United States. Having the right look for a part is one thing; being able to convincingly speak it is another. "I'm okay for commercials with short dialogue," he says. "When it comes time to do heavy dialogue of paragraphs and pages, I get a little tongue-tied."
David DeSantos has worked in Spanish-language commercials and done a couple of voiceovers. The bulk of his roles, however—which include appearances on CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, House, and in the film Delta Farce—have been in English. Although in high school DeSantos knew more than enough Spanish to get by, he's now in the process of relearning the language, partially for professional reasons. "You're catching me at a crossroads here," he says. "There's still a wide array of Latino actors who, in this day and age, have never spoken the language. They just grew up in the [San Fernando] Valley like me and miss out on some opportunities."
Actors, directors, and agents say a key to finding work is mastering accents and dialects. The actor with the ability to sound like he or she is at home in any Spanish-speaking region of the world is that much more employable. The same holds true for the Latino actor who can lose the accent.
Actor-writer-director Odalys Nan-in, who runs the Macha Theatre Company in Los Angeles, has been on auditions at which she was asked to lay an accent on more thickly and thereby sound more Spanish. "It's a bit frustrating," says the Cuban-born Nanin. "You spend a lot of money on diction class. Now you think, 'Wow, I'm here. I'm bilingual. I'm fluent,' but you look Latino, so they expect you to have an accent. And you've spent all this money trying to get rid of it. You have to play the game, and it's their game. Give them what they want and you get the part."
Programs such as the new CBS drama Cane and ABC's Ugly Betty will call for actors with little or no trace of an accent, says talent agent Jaime Ferrar of the Jaime Ferrar Agency, which represents many bilingual actors. "They're writing a lot more roles in which they do want the actor to be bilingual," says Ferrar, who represents six actors in Ladrón. "The actor who comes to me should be able to play with that accent and make it from South America, Central America, Mexico, or even Spain. We're very diverse within our own culture."
Although she considers it "a breath of fresh air" to be allowed to play an English-speaking character who doesn't have any trace of an accent, Yeniffer Behrens has taken on Mexican, Venezuelan, and Portuguese accents, among others. She is also working on a documentary about the importance of bilingual education in all walks of life, not just in acting. "I'll be talking to people in the educational system, parents, politicians, celebrities, and following a few children in the school my son goes to," says the Venezuela-born Behrens, whose credits include numerous TV appearances and the film A Day Without a Mexican. "I've had so much more success in my life because I'm fluent in both languages."
Before signing on as patriarch Ignacio Suarez on Ugly Betty, Cuban-born actor Tony Plana played a range of characters—from farmers and gardeners to drug dealers, as well as a Supreme Court justice. "I've played every stereotype except the pregnant teenager," he jokes. And paying gigs in Spanish? "Of course," returns Plana. "I've been the voice of Toyota Tundra, Jeep Liberty, Chrysler Pacifica—mostly in Spanish. It's allowed me to generate income using Spanish alone, so Spanish has been an asset, I think."
Indeed it has, and the professional world expands for Spanish-speaking performers who learn English as well. Talent administrators at the Spanish-language network Telemundo are gearing up for an open casting call for fresh faces and talent—English-speaking, Spanish-speaking, and bilingual—Oct. 13 at Back Stage's Actorfest in New York. The burgeoning world of telenovelas means that some 40–60 actors will be needed per show for a six- to nine-month commitment, according to Raúl Xumalin, Telemundo's vice president of talent development.
Xumalin's office is also looking to foster cross-pollinated opportunities for national advertising campaigns or other TV and film projects produced by Telemundo's parent company, NBC Universal. During a recent taping of Top Chef in Miami, producers included several telenovela actors as celebrity judges. "Basically, we try to find them other windows of exposure," Xumalin says. At an open casting call in the Miami–Fort Lauderdale area in June, the executive interviewed some 400 acting hopefuls, 35 of whom were called back.
Xumalin maintains that the performers whose résumés and headshots come across his desk fall into three distinct categories: 1) actors born outside the United States who are hired for a specific project; 2) those who come to the United States on their own and start taking classes, usually in New York or Los Angeles; and 3) those raised in the United States who look to bypass the world of telenovelas and go straight to film and TV.
All three categories of actors often include people who want to "pursue their Hollywood dreams," Xumalin says. "It's not easy for Spanish-speaking people to find jobs in the general market or the other way around."
Yvette Cruise is, by her own admission, "not a very good commercial actress." However, her résumé is peppered with episodic TV, including NYPD Blue, Criminal Minds, and Grey's Anatomy. In the upcoming Wayne Kramer–directed film Crossing Over, Cruise plays a "nanny from hell" and shares a scene in Spanish with Harrison Ford. "I see more and more medical shows like Grey's Anatomy coming to terms with Spanish-speaking people in the hospitals. It's becoming more real in the way they portray things," she says. Cruise has also found work in Spanish-language plays. Off and on for some five years, she played artist Frida Kahlo in a play developed by Grupo de Teatro Sinergia in L.A. "That play had such a following here that we kept bringing it back and filling houses," Cruise says.
A Spanish-speaking or bilingual actor who crosses over into the English-language market and hits it big is rare but not unheard of. Just look at actors like Gael GarcÃa Bernal and Diego Luna: Their breakout was the hit Spanish-language film Y Tu Mamá También. Antonio Banderas and Penélope Cruz were stars in their native Spain who worked in the films of Pedro Almodóvar. Bernal and Salma Hayek worked in telenovelas.
Of course, Hayek has done more than just work in telenovelas; she transported one into the American pop-culture mainstream. The popular and critically lauded Ugly Betty—starring America Ferrera as a misfit assistant at a New York fashion magazine—is routinely cited as quality entertainment and a door through which other Latino artists must charge.
Unlike Plana, her TV dad, the San Fernando Valley–raised Ferrera does not speak Spanish. "I'm sure there are advantages to being bilingual," Ferrera said backstage at the Emmys, shortly after taking home the award for best lead actress in a comedy series. "I don't happen to reap them."
Ventanarosa, Hayek's production company, and Ventanazul, her partnership with MGM, are geared toward developing Latino-themed stories for mainstream audiences. "I'm excited about her company," Plana says. "And I'm excited about the possibilities for Latino writers and directors to get a chance to develop their projects through her company. I think [Hayek] is so successful with Ugly Betty because she seems to have a strong sensibility of what can work in this market."
And don't forget: Mexico-born writer-director-producers Alejandro González Iñárritu (Babel, 21 Grams), Guillermo del Toro (Pan's Labyrinth, Hellboy), and Alfonso Cuarón (Y Tu Mamá También, Children of Men) continue to make Spanish-language films even after having conquered America. And they often bring established Mexican actors with them.
Plana, who previously had a role in the pioneering series Resurrection Blvd., considers Ugly Betty and his role in it iconoclastic. Ignacio is an illegal immigrant, a macho widower who likes to putter around his house and spend time with his kids. In other words, the character is anything but a stereotype. "Ignacio had a remarkable story line for a comedy that wanted to be liked," Plana says. "I've been part of Latino TV history twice. I was one of the protagonists on Resurrection Blvd. and now Ugly Betty? Forget it! Someone up there likes me."
When actors of Plana's generation were growing up, Spanish-speaking actors were a rarity in this coutry. Get past the Ricardo Montalbáns, Cesar Romeros, Fernando Lamases, and Anthony Quinns, and you had, well, not so many names. "In those days, you had Henry Darrow and John Saxon playing Mexicans. It was difficult to get a major role if you had a Spanish surname," says Richard Yniguez, who began his career in the early 1970s. "But as I entered the workforce and started auditioning, you start to prove yourself as a young performer, and things start opening up." When he began in the business, Yniguez would walk into producers' offices and find that they would say he came "highly recommended." And by whom? "It was always Ricardo Montalbán," Yniguez says. "It was great that someone whose career was at its apex at that time, here he was recommending me, and I'm sure he was recommending other young performers, and we rose to the opportunity."
Times have changed for Latinos, in and outside the entertainment industry, Plana says. "There's more of a sense of responsibility on the part of the networks and filmmakers to represent Latinos in the world they're creating," he says. "Now there are all these different shows, both on the major networks and on cable, that have the tendency to include at least one Latino character."
In American projects, the types of roles available to Latino actors are not always keeping pace with the growing number of roles. All the performers interviewed for this article noted that there is still no shortage of Latino gardeners, maids, gang members, and illegals to play. But upper-middle-class professionals—doctors, lawyers, and the like? Few and far between.
Talent agent Ferrar, who broke into the business as an actor in the 1980s, didn't fit the "gangbanger" roles. "I fit the mold of the innocent guy who got into trouble with gangs or the guy who got caught crossing the border," Ferrar says. "I got to play some of those roles and had a great time doing it." And there was no typecasting for commercials based on his bilingualism. Ferrar hawked products such as Budweiser, the lottery, Levi's 501 Jeans, and "every fast food you can think of," he recalls. "They always said you should only do one McDonald's commercial. I did five. In the commercial area, I always had six commercials running, which was good—and, at the same time, sometimes it brings a low period. You can get a little overexposed."
"For a long time, my bread and butter was commercials," Pires says. "I was doing so well that I never really went into any other areas. One of the things we always have to do is not limit ourselves."
Those who don't speak the speech admit the advantages of being bilingual—perhaps in any language. During rehearsals for a national tour of Camelot in which he plays King Arthur, Lou Diamond Phillips took a break to fly to Spain for a small role in Guerrilla, Steven Soderbergh's film about the revolutionary Che Guevara. The assignment, although not a substantial role, scared Phillips more than taking on the mantle of King Arthur. Why? Because the entire film—his role included—is in Spanish. And that's a language Phillips, who rose to early fame playing singer Ritchie Valens in La Bamba and a barrio gangbanger in Stand and Deliver, does not speak. "Once again, a misperception about me. I'm actually Filipino, Irish, and Cherokee," Phillips says. "They were kind enough to record my lines. I'm learning by rote as if I were learning music. I made it clear to them I don't speak Spanish but I'm more than happy to learn."
It's not to say that a higher-profile, Spanish-speaking actor would necessarily have beat out Phillips for the role. Guerrilla, starring fully bilingual, Puerto Rican–born Benicio del Toro (whose Oscar-winning role in Soderbergh's Traffic was entirely in Spanish), is a highly anticipated film in mainstream and Latino media. As was the case with last year's Babel, the film will give several Spanish-speaking actors strong roles and exposure.
"You have to view the world from many perspectives, and that informs you as an actor," Phillips says. "So, yeah, being bilingual or even thinking in another language is a good exercise and lends itself to being a better actor. And anything that can take you out of that box, that keeps you from being labeled in too-bold letters, opens your accessibility and marketing as an actor. That's the business side of things."