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In 2004 she also began a role as Abuela Elena, the grandmother of the title characters in the animated PBS children's series Maya & Miguel. She received an Emmy nomination as Best Guest Actress in a Comedy Series for this role. Ontiveros had a recurring role in the 2004–05 season of American prime time soap opera series Desperate Housewives as Juanita Solis, Gabrielle's suspicious mother-in-law. She continued to work in the studio and independent films, such as This Christmas in 2007 and My Uncle Rafael in 2012. She and Ferrera appeared together again in the family comedy Our Family Wedding. Her performance received excellent reviews and earned her and her co-star a Special Jury Prize at the prestigious Sundance Film Festival. She co-starred with America Ferrera in the 2002 film Real Women Have Curves, as the overbearing mother of Ferrera's character. During the series, she participated with Esai Morales, Tony Plana, Yvonne DeLaRosa, JC Gonzalez, Raymond Cruz and Ana Villafañe. Ontiveros, during her acting career participated in the web series Los Americans (2011), which is characterized by having a multigenerational focus, a middle-class family living in Los Angeles. For that role, she was nominated for Best Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture at the 2000 Independent Spirit Awards. She said in multiple interviews that she accepted the role even before seeing the script, solely on the basis of being asked to play a character who was not defined by Hispanic ethnicity. In 2000 she was featured in the film Chuck & Buck, in which she played Beverly, a tough theater director who puts on a play written by one of the film's main characters.
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She also appeared in the Academy Award-winning film As Good as It Gets. Long after film was released, she would still reportedly be "hissed" at by Selena fans when she was out in public. In the latter film she portrayed Yolanda Saldívar, the murderer of Tejano superstar Selena. Ontiveros worked with Nava in subsequent films, including My Family/Mi Familia (1995) and Selena (1997). She also had a cameo appearance in Blood in Blood Out (1993) as Carmen, aĭrug dealer who Paco ( Benjamin Bratt) busts in an undercover cop sting while pretending to be a drug dealer. She played the housekeeper, Rosalita, a Spanish maid hired to assist in the packing and moving of the Walsh family in the hit adventure film The Goonies (1985) and a housekeeper in Dolly Dearest (1992). tells the immigrants' story" when asked to name her favorite film from her long career. In a 2004 interview with the Dominican newspaper Listin Diario, she called El Norte "the film that always will remain in me.
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One of Ontiveros' most prominent early movie roles was in the 1983 Gregory Nava film El Norte, in which she played a seamstress and maid who acts as mentor to a newly arrived immigrant girl from Guatemala. I've given every maid I've ever portrayed soul and heart." In part because of her history in this role, she was chosen as the narrator for the documentary Maid in America. Ontiveros once estimated that she had played a maid at least 150 times on stage and screen she wanted to see more diverse roles available to Latina actors, noting "I'm proud to represent those hands that labor in this country. Prior to acting, she had worked for 18 years as a social worker, and she continued as an activist with many of the same causes with which she worked in that profession, such as domestic violence prevention and AIDS awareness and prevention. With her husband's encouragement, she took the job and parlayed it into a long stage and screen career. During a period of dissatisfaction with her career as a social worker, Ontiveros was trying to decide whether to go back to school for a nursing degree when she saw an article about a need for local film extras.
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Īfter her marriage, she and her husband moved to California to realize his dream of starting an automotive business. She graduated from El Paso High School and went on to study at Texas Woman's University in Denton, Texas, where she received a bachelor's degree in social work. Ontiveros was born in El Paso, Texas, the daughter of Luz "Lucita" Castañón and Juan Moreno, middle-class Mexican immigrants who overcame a lack of formal education to become owners of a tortilla factory and two restaurants in El Paso.