America Ferrera painted face white for audition

Latin actress America Ferrera was so desperate to land a movie role, she bleached her hair blonde and covered herself in make-up to lighten her skin colour.
The Ugly Betty star has encountered racial discrimination her whole career, and when she was a teen eager to break into the industry, she went to great lengths to try and convince casting directors she could fit the part.
"I was 18 and putting myself on tape for a movie I really wanted,"
the now-31-year-old recalled to the New York Times. "I got that
phone call: 'They cast a Latino male in another role in the film;
they're not looking to cast (a Latina).'"
America refused to give up and took drastic action before shooting
her audition tape.
"I defiantly bleached my hair blonde, painted my face white and
made the audition tape," the actress laughed. "I never heard
back.
"I just remember feeling so powerless. What do you do when someone
says, 'Your colour skin is not what we're looking for?' Let me tell
you: Blonde does not suit me. I try not to prove my point on
audition tapes anymore."
The star, whose parents hail from Honduras, reveals it wasn't the
first time she had been boxed in by her heritage.
"My very first audition ever, I was about 16, and the casting
director (for a commercial) said, 'Can you do it again but sound
more Latino?'" she remembered. "I had no idea what she was talking
about.
"'You mean you want me to speak in Spanish?' She's like, 'No. Do it
in English but just sound more Latino.' I genuinely didn't realise
until later that she was asking me to speak English with a broken
accent. It confused me, because I thought, 'I am Latino, so isn't
this what a Latino sounds like?'"
And it wasn't just casting directors who were blind to America's
acting potential - even her agent during her time as an
up-and-coming star failed to help her realise dreams of pushing the
boundaries of Latinos in Hollywood.
"I had just won (a top award at the Sundance Film Festival), and he
(my manager) wanted me to audition for the Latina chubby girl in a
pilot," she continued. "She wasn't even the lead; she was just the
sidekick...
"I said, 'I'm not going in for that'. When I ultimately left him,
he (told) another of my reps, 'Somebody should tell that girl that
she has an unrealistic idea of what she can accomplish in this
industry'. That was someone I was paying to represent me!"