America Ferrera

Nice girls don’t always finish last. Just consider America Ferrera: The famously sweet and supersuccessful actress says learning to be even kinder—especially to herself—was a turning point in her life. Her wisdom could be the blueprint for the breakthroughs you’ve been waiting for, too.

- Amy Spencer

America Ferrera and I are in the catering tent on the set of the NBC show Superstore, of which she is a producer and star, playing Amy, an employee at a big-box retailer. She scans the options as I spoon up this and that. “Look at that pasta, yummy—you’re only getting healthy stuff,” she observes. I start explaining, “Well, I’m on this thing…,” while she, meanwhile, locks in on the steak: “What’s this?” 

“Rib eye,” says the man with the carving knife.

“Okay,” she announces, smiling and holding out her plate.

“I like it medium.” 

Her secret to leaving a buffet happy—figure out exactly what you want, then ask for it with confidence—is also the key to her success. What challenges her about playing Amy is that “she’s resigned to what her life is,” explains America as we settle in on folding chairs the crew has set up in a fake grass runner between trailers. “I feel more like a Betty,” she admits, referring to the ambitious underdog she played in the wildly popular Ugly Betty, the show that earned her an Emmy in 2007. “Betty was a go-getter.” And America, 32, isn’t content doing the same old either.

Since her breakout role in The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants in 2005, she’s balanced feel-good roles on TV and the big screen with documentaries that tackle important issues like climate change, women’s rights, and immigration. Last year she launched her own production company, Take Fountain Productions, and completed her first triathlon, alongside her husband of five years, Ryan Piers Williams. Recently, the bilingual web series Gente-Fied, which she executive-produced and stars in, went to Sundance.