2023 may be considered the year of Barbie, but it’s also turning out to be the year of America Ferrera. Despite a successful film and TV career spanning more than two decades, the actor made her most notable return to the big screen in Greta Gerwig’s film earlier this summer to well-deserved fanfare.

The Emmy and Golden Globe winner was once named one of Time’s 100 most influential people in the world, thanks to roles in the likes of Ugly Betty and Superstore, which she also co-produced.

From exciting upcoming releases to early 2000s classics, Ferrera always brings plenty of warmth and heart to her characters, often stealing the scene with an emotive monologue or reflection. So whether you’re a fan of drama, comedy or a bit of both, here’s where you can watch her. 

Ferrera deserves all the flowers she’s been receiving for her turn as the scene-stealing disillusioned Mattel employee Gloria in Greta Gerwig’s billion-dollar grossing film.

While grappling with the growing distance between her and her teenage daughter, Gloria helps Margot Robbie’s Stereotypical Barbie journey through the real world. Naturally, that monologue, in which she details just how “literally impossible it is to be a woman”, has since gone viral for all the right reasons. Indeed, Ferrera told Town And Country  that “the speech was a gift as an actor to get to deliver something that feels so cathartic and truthful”.

Ferrera’s breakout role came in 2006 as hard-working and optimistic Betty Suarez, who struggles to make her mark at Mode, a fashion magazine, because she doesn’t meet the traditional standards of beauty. The critically acclaimed series, which dealt with themes of identity, societal pressure and belonging, made Ferrera the first Latina woman to win a lead actress Emmy. 

In the franchise that also helped launch the careers of Blake Lively and Alexis Bledel, Ferrera played headstrong Carmen Lowell. The film had a simple yet magical premise: over the course of one summer, four best friends pass around a pair of jeans that fits each one of them, despite their different body structures. 

But underneath the fantastical plot is a deep portrayal of the joys highs and lows of female friendship. It also deals with Carmen’s strained relationship with her father, whom she believes has abandoned her for his new family. The perfect sleepover watch, and then some. 

Continuing her return to the big screen, this September Ferrera will star in Dumb Money, the wild yet true story of YouTuber Keith Gill who brought Wall Street to its knees after sinking his life savings into video game retailer GameStop’s stocks.

Alongside the likes of Seth Rogen, Pete Davidson and Shailene Woodley, Ferrera will play Jennifer Campbell, a viewer of Keith’s YouTube channel who becomes embroiled in the madness. 

In recent years, Ferrera has been a small-screen regular in NBC workplace comedy series Superstore, centred around the everyday work lives of a group of retail employees in Missouri. As Amy Sosa, the no-nonsense assistant manager, Ferrera was regularly hailed as the heart of the series until her departure in 2021.

Ferrera is criminally underrated in 2002’s Real Women Have Curves, which also marked her first feature film debut. The coming-of-age story saw her play Ana Garcia, a Mexican American teenage girl navigating a boiling cauldron of cultural expectations, class constrictions, family duty and her own personal aspirations. Although she wants to go away to college, she must battle against the views of her parents, who think she should stay at home and provide for the family. As a compromise, she works with her mother in a sewing factory over the summer and learns some important lessons about life, helping her make a decision about her future.

You’ll probably already have watched this Apple TV+ series charting the greed-filled rise and inevitable fall of WeWork, one of the world’s most valuable startups, and the narcissists whose chaotic love made it all possible.

In it, Ferrera plays Elishia Kennedy, a fictional character in the series who was made to represent SoulCycle’s founder Julie Rice (who later became WeWork’s chief brand officer).

Images: Getty