Celebrity crush: America Ferrera

In honor of the American Independence Day, here's the first of four entries that relate -- in varying ways -- to the holiday. For the first, you need look no farther than her first name: She starred on Ugly Betty, but in her real life, Ms. Ferrera personifies "America the beautiful."

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Name: America Ferrera (images | Web site | Twitter)
Hometown: Los Angeles, Calif., according to her Wikipedia profile. She's the youngest of six children born to a couple who immigrated to America from Honduras in the 1970s.
Best Known For: America's biggest claim to fame is her starring role in Ugly Betty, an American comedy adapted from a Colombian telenovela. The show ran four seasons.

But she's been a busy actress for almost a decade now, with her first screen credit as an adult (and second overall) -- the starring role in the indie film Real Women Have Curves -- hitting theaters in late 2002, just a few months after she turned 18. She's provided narration to almost 100 episodes of the documentary series Independent Lens, performed in a recurring role in the second season of The Good Wife, and co-starred in two Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants movies alongside Alexis Bledel, fellow celebrity crush Amber Tamblyn, and Blake Lively.

(In an odd twist of fate, when that film series started, Tamblyn and Bledel were easily the biggest stars of the quartet, for their work on Joan of Arcadia and Gilmore Girls, respectively. But between the first and second films, Ugly Betty and Gossip Girl both erupted onto the scene, changing that dynamic.)

She's also dipped into production work, with a producer credit on three projects (a short and two features) since 2007.
Humble Beginnings: She scored a role in a production of Hamlet at age 7, Wikipedia notes, and as The Artful Dodger in Oliver! when she was 10.

From left: Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants co-stars
Blake Lively, Alexis Bledel, America Ferrera,
and Amber Tamblyn. Yowza to the fourth power.

The road between her debut in indie film and her summer chick-flick breakthrough and TV superstardom led where most such roads go, including a guest appearance in a TV police procedural (CSI, in her case) and some TV-movies. She did a little animation voice work before she got famous, continuing into the How to Train Your Dragon feature films. She's also kept up the stage work.

Why Ye Olde Podcaster Likes Her: This woman's charm, humility, and genuine warmth radiate in every non-scripted appearance she makes. I never watched Ugly Betty -- it just seemed too silly even for me -- but I've been impressed by her in interviews, loved her work alongside Alan Cumming on The Good Wife, and remember being floored by her performance in Real Women Have Curves.

And I wasn't just being cute with the "America the beautiful" line above -- she's as beautiful and real-looking as they come.

TV and Web video credits: The Good Wife, season 2 (Amazon | iTunes) * Funny or Die Presents..., season 2, episode 2 (Amazon | iTunes) * Ugly Betty, season 4 (Amazon | iTunes) * Ugly Betty: Cast and Creators Live at the Paley Center (Amazon | iTunes) * Ugly Betty, season 3 (Amazon | iTunes) * Ugly Betty, season 2 (Amazon | iTunes) * Ugly Betty, season 1 (Amazon | iTunes) * CSI, season 5: "Harvest" (Amazon | iTunes) * Touched by an Angel, season 9: "The Word" (Amazon | iTunes)
Animation and narration: Independent Lens, season 12 (Amazon | iTunes) * How to Train Your Dragon 2 (Amazon | iTunes) * Legend of the Boneknapper Dragon (2010 short) (Amazon | iTunes) * How to Train Your Dragon (Amazon | iTunes) * Independent Lens, season 9 (Amazon | iTunes) * Tinker Bell (2008) (Amazon | iTunes) * Independent Lens, season 8 (Amazon | iTunes) * Independent Lens, season 7 (Amazon | iTunes) * Independent Lens, season 6 (Amazon | iTunes) * Independent Lens, season 5 (Amazon | iTunes) * Independent Lens, season 4 (Amazon | iTunes)

Film and TV-movie credits: Our Family Wedding (Amazon | iTunes) * The Dry Land (Amazon | iTunes) * The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 (Amazon | iTunes) * Under the Same Moon (Amazon | iTunes) * Towards Darkness (Amazon | iTunes) * Muertas (2007 short) (Amazon | iTunes) * Steel City (Amazon | iTunes) * 3:52 (Amazon | iTunes) * Lords of Dogtown (Amazon | iTunes) * The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (Amazon | iTunes) * How the Garcia Girls Spent Their Summer (Amazon | iTunes) * Plainsong (2004 TV-movie) (Amazon | iTunes) * Darkness Minus Twelve (2004 short) (Amazon | iTunes) * $5.15/Hr. (2004 TV-movie) (Amazon | iTunes) * Real Women Have Curves (Amazon | iTunes)