Lupe Ontiveras – Mexican Actress Dead at 69

“Well, you wouldn’t be playing it like a little retarded kid, but yes, you would be acting youthful”

She was given the best lines in one of my very favorite films of the past couple of decades. If Mexican-born Lupe Ontiveras had only appeared in CHUCK & BUCK we would still be mourning the passing of a great cult movie actress for it was that film which she’ll be best known, and for which she won the National Board of Review award for Best Supporting actress in 2000 as the children’s theater manager who befriends the man-child Buck (Mike White). She was the religious neighbor Nora, who Jack Nicholson tells to “Go sell crazy somewhere else!” in AS GOOD AS IT GETS and she won a Special Jury Prize at Cannes in 2002 for REAL WOMEN HAVE CURVES. Ms Ontiveras stood just 4’11″ and worked for many years as a social worker while taking acting roles. She played the maid Consuelo who burns down her employer’s home, killing the whole family in Todd Solondz’s STORYTELLING in 2001. In fact she was often cast as latino maids and she estimated she has played a maid in at least 150 films or plays. Lupe Ontiveras died of liver cancer Friday, July 27th at age 69.

From THE GUARDIAN:

Born Guadalupe Moreno, Ontiveros’s Hollywood career spanned four decades and included roles in the 80s classic The Goonies and the 2002 film Real Women Have Curves, for which she won a special jury prize at the Sundance film festival. In Selena, a drama based on the life of the late Tejano musician, she garnered critical acclaim for her performance as Yolanda Saldívar, the woman convicted of murdering the singer in 1995. Another big role came through Gregory Nava’s El Norte (1983), in which she played Nacha, a maid who is tasked with looking after a young immigrant from Guatemala………..

Read the rest HERE

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2012/jul/27/lupe-ontiveros-dies-liver-cancer