Before Jennifer Lopez, Salma Hayek & America Ferrera

Actress Lupe Ontiveros has played a maid more than 150 times. “I’d get parts if I spoke the way they wanted me to speak,” she says. “I did it because it was an investment in my career.”

“You’d say, ‘You want an accent?’ And they’d say, ‘Yes, we prefer for you to have an accent.’ And the thicker and more waddly it is, the more they like it,” the actress, born in Texas, says. She’s been in The Goonies, Charlie’s Angels and Who’s The Boss?. She says: “I long to play a judge. I long to play a lesbian woman. I long to play a councilman, someone with some chutzpah.” [NPR]