America Ferrera makes small, private worries matter, with a warmth that survives some thin writing. We rate her most when the script trusts her to be quiet, rather than asking her to explain the film.
Fi1m perspective
In Dumb Money (2023), America Ferrera stands in a hospital corridor, masked, refreshing a number on her phone. Her Jenny Campbell is a nurse with two children who buys shares between shifts, and Ferrera needs no speech to make that investment feel consequential. We were moved by her silence because it let us register the worry without another caption telling us what to think. Craig Gillespie’s film is quick and well cast, but has little to say about the numbers it explains. For once, Gillespie lets an actor hold our attention without an explanation attached.
That ability to make familiar pressures feel personal helps explain a career built around determined women dealing with families and workplaces. The feature debut was Real Women Have Curves (2002), as Ana Garcia, a first-generation Mexican-American teenager. Television then gave her sustained leading parts: Betty Suarez in Ugly Betty (2006–2010), followed by Amy Dubanowski in Superstore (2015–2021). These are useful landmarks, though our reviewed films suggest a particular frustration. She can supply conviction before the script has supplied much of a character.
Animation has not always used her more generously. As the voice of Astrid in How to Train Your Dragon (2010), directed by Dean DeBlois and Chris Sanders, she belongs to a supporting cast given less attention than the boy and his dragon. We recommend the film, with that reservation, but Astrid is too readily recognisable as a type. The occasional stiffness of the animation makes it harder for the supporting humans to seem individual.
Barbie (2023) gives her more words without solving the problem. Ferrera’s Gloria is warm and exact, yet Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach have written a part largely there to make a point. The speech is well acted; it still sounds prepared for quotation, and Nick Houy’s editing has to wait while the paragraphs are delivered. The comedy is worth an evening, but those pauses make the film duller, and Ferrera cannot act them away. The next script might usefully trust her with less dialogue.
Biography
America Ferrera is an American actress. Born on 18 April 1984 in Los Angeles, California, she made her feature film debut in Real Women Have Curves (2002). She appeared in The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (2005) and voiced Astrid in the How to Train Your Dragon films (2010–2019).
Ferrera starred as Betty Suarez in the television series Ugly Betty (2006–2010). She played Gloria in Barbie (2023) and Jenny Campbell in Dumb Money (2023). She attended the University of Southern California.
