Lupe Ontiveros talks about Latino homophobia, AIDS and Making It as an Uncommon Beauty

Lupe Ontiveros is spoiling me. We’re having lunch in a sushi restaurant in Whittier, California, and she keeps ordering more exotic rolls I’ve never heard of. I tell her I’m stuffed, plus I’m taking notes and making sure the recorder is working. I’m more interested in getting the story right. She’s more interested in having a full experience.

We’re near her home, only thirty miles from the usual star hangouts of Los Angeles, but it may as well be 3,000 miles. It’s a middle-class suburb east of L.A. Prosperous, but not ostentatious. It seems like half the people in the place know Lupe and they all like her. And it’s not just because they know her recurring role on Desperate Housewives, for which she was nominated for an Emmy, or for the many indie films she’s been in. They just like her. She has a booming laugh, and is quick with bawdy anecdotes (which can’t be printed here). And she has a special passion for promoting understanding of HIV and AIDS in the Latino community.

Her ease with everyone and her zest for taking a bite out of life, as well as kobe beef sushi, is enough to make a semi-reclusive reporter make a mental note: Learn from Lupe and take more chances.

Lupe is a character actor. In Hollywood-speak, that means she’s part of the other ninety-nine percent of working actors. You may recognize them by their face or their roles, but often not their names. Character actors aren’t on the front pages of tabloids. They usually don’t drive German luxury sedans. They don’t play the sexy, romantic lead. They aren’t married to Brad Pitt. Still, they can play juicy characters and have enduring careers if they’re assertive, hard-working, talented, and fortunate. And Lupe considers herself all of

those things.

Lupe once joked that she has played 150 maids over her four decades as an actress. It was an exaggeration but she was referring to the key issue facing Latino actors in film and TV: There just aren’t enough roles for American Latinos and the few good ones are often filled by actors outside the U.S. As she nudges a plate of sashimi at me, Ontiveros finds it amusing that I can’t name any “homegrown,” Latino actors or actresses. I struggle. I hadn’t prepped for that.

Penelope Cruz?

“She’s from Spain.”

Benicio Del Toro?

“Puerto Rico.”

Catherine Zeta-Jones?

“Oh hell no. She’s from Wales.” I probably should have known that. I keep thinking. She laughs. “See?” I assume I’m just having a brain freeze. I promise I will come up with a big name before lunch is through.

The problem for U.S.-born Latino actors is both cultural and political, she claims. “How would you feel? What if you were an actor and saw all of the parts played by British or Australian actors? Are these actors guest workers? Are they more important because they are actors or because they earn more money than in other professions? It’s illogical.”

She suggests that the dearth of Latinos onscreen is not unlike AIDS and HIV in the Latino community. As with non-maid roles for Latina actors, HIV/AIDS in the Latino communities is for the most part invisible.

“One time an organization asked me to walk for AIDS. I asked how much of that money would be going to the Latino community. They said they didn’t know. I said when you find out you let me know and then I’ll walk. I asked this because the Latino community is lagging in money to fight AIDS but they are getting infected just as fast as anyone else. Maybe faster.”

AIDS and denial in Latino America

Ontiveros says the overarching Latino attitude regarding HIV and AIDS is denial. While much of the U.S. has made great strides in learning about HIV/AIDS, the attitudes of many traditional Latino families are stunningly retro.

“First of all there is a major denial of homosexuality. It’s a taboo. You don’t talk about those things. They don’t exist. People say, ‘My son is not gay. My daughter is not gay.’ But you never know. The biggest macho Latino guys, they can be gay and they will lie about it. They will go to their grave before they admit it.”

I point out gay Latino celebrities—well, the one well-known Latino celebrity—could help turn around such entrenched beliefs. She scoffs. “Ricky Martin, okay. But what took him so long to admit what everyone else already figured out? Because that’s not the image that sells records. When are we going to get over it and accept the reality without stigma and condemnation?”

The situation is even worse in undocumented families in the U.S. “If they find out someone in the family has AIDS they immediately send them back to Mexico. Certainly Mexico isn’t offering any better medical care or help. [Traditional Latino families] don’t want to deal with it, whether they are illegal or legal. If someone dies of complications from AIDS, they cover it up. They say, ‘He died of pneumonia.’ Well he did, but there is more to it.”

Ontiveros, who’s been married to the same man for forty-five years, admits things are changing for gay and lesbian Latinos, but not fast enough in most cases. “My nephew in law school just came out to me I think because we created that atmosphere for him to feel comfortable. My kids are open and they would ask questions and I would explain things to them. They learned the word ‘gay’ early on, and that it was not a bad thing to be.”

The screen, big and small, can be used to promote understanding of sexual and racial issues, or be used to reinforce negative stereotypes. Too often it’s the latter, she laments. “Take the stereotypes which I’ve had to fight all my career, for being a female and being Latina. It automatically places me in a position for not the best roles. Playing the bumpkin. The uneducated, illiterate, and I find that’s where most of the damage is done to younger people. They are easily impressed. They learn about sexuality and ethnicity from screen.”

I mention Antonio Banderas, who played a gay man in an AIDS-themed film. Ontiveros raises an eyebrow just as I remember he’s from Spain.

Acting takes “cojones,” especially for women

Ontiveros grew up in El Paso, Texas. She graduated from high school at sixteen and chose nursing in college. “My whole family was in the medical profession but I found out [nursing] was not right for me.” She stayed at Texas Women’s University, but changed over to sociology and psychology and graduated with a double degree. That was the best thing I could have done. Social work has been the basic foundation of who I am. I have continuously been learning about human behavior. I think actors and directors and writers should take psychology because they are transferring human behavior to the screen, and illusions and delusions and fantasies.”

Ontiveros launched her career doing theater in the 1970s and landed a role in Zoot Suit on Broadway in 1979. The show closed after only forty-one performances. But that experience led to small roles in mainstream Hollywood, often as thickly-accented maids or prostitutes. She didn’t turn down roles, no matter how degrading. Meatier parts started coming her way and in 1997 she had a breakthrough as the troubled assassin Yolanda Saldivar in the biopic of the Tejano singer Selena (1997). That same year, she also had a small but pivotal role in As Good As It Gets. She played a maid.

Movie critics heaped praise on the low-budget 2000 film Chuck and Buck, a darkly comic story of a man with arrested development who obsesses over a childhood friend. Critics noted Ontiveros’ skills in a memorable supporting role as the tough theater director who agrees to stage Buck’s poorly conceived play. Then, lauded indie film director Todd Solondz cast her as an overburdened and underappreciated maid at the end of her rope in Storytelling. In 2002 she had a costarring role as an immigrant mother in the critically acclaimed Mexican-American comedy-drama, Real Women Have Curves.

Ontiveros’ reputation has steadily grown, even in a brutal industry where most actresses over age forty are lucky to be cast as anything at all. In 2005 she reached an even wider audience with a recurring role as Juanita Solis in the primetime series Desperate Housewives. For that role Ontiveros was nominated for a primetime Emmy. Although “was nominated” is not exactly correct, she says. “I submitted myself. Those are the kind of cojones I have. I went for it.”

Now, if there’s a compelling role for an older Latina actress, Lupe is on the short-list. She’s proud to often play the “bad guy,” even when it is a maid. “I don’t want to be a saint. Just smart. I’ve wanted to play the mayor of a city, but take it even further with contradictions, be a little bit bad, a woman who will not take shit from the city council. But the industry isn’t coming up with enough intelligent roles like that for us.”

She admits she’s come a long way from being praised for “speaking English so well,” from people who make assumptions based on her skin color. Part of that, she says, is decades of hard-won recognition in entertainment. “I worked for it. For a long time I was excluded because I was Latina and because I was not some gorgeous, tall creature.”

Just then Jimmy Smits comes to mind.

“Right. Jimmy is American,” she says. “And Edward James Olmos.” She waits for more American-born Latino actors. I tell her I’ll keep thinking. I begin to wish I had done more prep on this issue.

She says while mainstream Hollywood films are pretty barren for Latino actors, TV is becoming more fertile. She brings up Adam Rodriguez on CSI, and Puerto Rican actors Lauren Velez and David Zayas. “But what about the big guns? How many regular Latinos are there in the United States? We watch TV and have jobs and lives and pay taxes. We are everywhere. We are doctors and teachers. But we don’t see ourselves enough [on the screen].”

She credits independent filmmakers for being more forward-thinking in terms of race and sexuality. “If it wasn’t for independent films I wouldn’t be sitting here doing this interview. I wouldn’t have the career I have. Independent film is where the creativity is happening. There is more flexibility. It’s a team in that world. You can be as creative as you want to.”

One of her best experiences was in the 2002 film, Real Women Have Curves, and the play it was based on. “I had done the play in San Diego and knew the playwright. I did three different productions of the play and I knew the character, the mother, quite well. I knew the director and, when the time came, there was a lot of rewriting done on the script. It was being adapted from a play to a script. When I went to read with the creator, Patricia Cardoso, I gave her suggestions for what the character would say, and she accepted all of my suggestions. She wasn’t an insecure director who wanted power. She trusted me and that’s one of the most important things I need in a director. I’ve worked with some real [expletive], who will remain nameless.”

“I had to do something”

Ontiveros says her AIDS activism extends almost as long as her acting career. “I started losing friends when I was doing theater in New York. Back then the AIDS virus wasn’t identified yet. But they blamed promiscuity. Certainly there was that, but it wasn’t the whole story. I’ve lost more than twenty-five friends from various walks of life, many dancers I worked with, Latino and non-Latino. I felt empty. I needed to do something, starting with my own community.”

Over the years, Ontiveros has been involved with several HIV/AIDS organizations, including Latino Commission on AIDS. For the past seven years she has co-chaired the Commission’s gala Cielo Latino fundraiser, and worked alongside fellow actress Rosie Perez, Miss Universe Stefania Fernandez, Broadway star Lin-Manuel Miranda, and news anchor Soledad O’Brien. Her volunteer work also put her in contact with the late Dennis De Leon, president of the Latino Commission on AIDS and one of the first New York city officials to announce that he was infected with HIV. “I adored that man. I believed in him, and believe in the efforts to combat AIDS.”

A name comes to me: “Rosie Perez!”

“Look at you.” She laughs. “You’re so proud of yourself. But that’s a gimme because I mentioned her earlier.” I looked at my notes. She was right.

Larry Buhl interviewed International AIDS Conference speakers for the July issue.

September 2010