Elizabeth Peña, the husky-voiced, Cuban American character actress who brought grit and sensuality to her portrayals, including her breakout role as a revolution-minded maid in the Paul Mazursky satire "Down and Out in Beverly Hills" and a battered wife in the Luis Valdez drama "La Bamba," has died. She was 55.
Peña appeared in 45 films during her three-decade career. She played a self-absorbed woman whose New York apartment is invaded by aliens in the sci-fi fantasy "batteries not included" (1987), which starred Jessica Tandy and Hume Cronyn. She was well-received as the girlfriend of Tim Robbins'' disturbed Vietnam veteran in "Jacob''s Ladder" (1990) and as the love interest of Chris Cooper in director John Sayles'' "Lone Star" (1996), which brought her an Independent Spirit Award for best supporting female actor.
Her frequent television work included a recurring role on the Emmy-winning ABC sitcom "Modern Family" as the mother of Sofia Vergara''s character. Most recently, she appeared on "Matador," a spy drama that premiered in July on the El Rey cable network.
She spoke often of the struggle to avoid ethnic typecasting, playing her share of pregnant girlfriends and housekeepers. She said she turned down director Robert Redford''s offer of a role in "The Milagro Beanfield War" because, she told The Times in 1987, "I didn''t want to play another Mexican."
Nonetheless, Peña "did extremely well. She was always working," Valdez said Thursday. "She was quite judicious in what she chose to take on. Even if the part was shallow she gave it a depth that increased the quality. She was able to really make contact with the character from the inside out."
Peña was born in Elizabeth, N.J., on Sept. 23, 1959. When she was about five months old, her parents took her to their native Cuba. They remained for the first several years of Fidel Castro''s rule, in part because her father, Mario, was jailed after writing a poem critical of the government.
They settled in New York, where her parents founded the Latin American Theatre Ensemble, a bilingual, off-Broadway company. Peña discovered her calling when she attended one of her father''s plays and was "blown away" by an actress playing a mother whose son has been killed.
"I literally felt like I had levitated off my seat," Peña told Back Stage West in 2001. "I sobbed and I ran to my mother and father and said, ''I want to be actress!'' My father was happy. My mother was miserable. She thought it was a phase, but the phase kept going."
By the time Peña graduated from New York High School of the Performing Arts in 1977 she had acted in 40 plays. In 1979 she made her film debut in "El Super," a Spanish-language production in which she played the teenage daughter of Cuban exiles in New York.
She began sending him photographs every week — "shots of me with long hair, short hair, smiley face, crying" — but got no response. Finally, she went to the main gate of Disney Studios, where Mazursky had an office, and talked the guard into taking her demo tape to the casting director.
Less than an hour later, the casting director invited her to read for the part of Carmen, the fiery maid to a nouveau-riche couple played by Richard Dreyfuss and Bette Midler. She bought a sexy dress and falsies to amplify her breasts before reading for the famous director.
"When I was done he looked at me and said, ''You''re perfect, love you! I want you to audition with Richard Dreyfuss, but you''ve got to lose the [falsies],'' " Peña recalled. "So I flung them out and had another three auditions and got ''Down and Out in Beverly Hills.'' It was like a dream come true."
Cuban-American actress Elizabeth Peña has died at age 55. She played dramatic roles in movies such as La Bamba and Lone Star and appeared in sitcoms including Modern Family.
She grew up in an artistic family in Elizabeth, N.J. Her father, an actor and playwright, and her mother, an arts administrator, founded the Latin American Theatre Ensemble in New York. Peña graduated from New York''s High School of the Performing Arts. She landed her first film role in 1978, as Aurelita, the teenage daughter of Cubans living in exile in New York City, in León Ichaso''s El Super in 1978.
Peña''s fans, lamenting her death on Latino social media, expressed frustration that such a talented actress could not break away from stereotypical roles such as the seductive maid in the movie Down and Out in Beverly Hills or the housekeeper in the short-lived sitcom I Married Dora. As NPR''s Felix Contreras puts it, Peña seemed "doomed to play the sassy best friend or the emotional Latina." But it wasn''t for lack of trying. In interviews, Peña often talked about searching for parts where the character just happened to be Latina.
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