Marie Constance
Dancing to Her Own Tune

September (By Sandra Márquez, Hispanic Magazine) - A childhood photograph captures Constance Marie in motion: Thrashing her arms and body in a display of strength, beauty and conviction, Constance is a kinetic force. She is dancing by herself on the center of the dance floor. It’s a moment of revelation that helps explain how a painfully shy girl who nearly flunked her high-school drama class grew up to become one of the most high-profile Latinas on television today.

Constance, who turns 35 this month, tells the story from her dressing room on the set of the ABC family comedy The George López Show. “There is a picture that was taken from the roof of a house,” Constance says of the family photo. “Mostly it’s adults out there. The kids were playing doing their kid thing. And I am in the center of the dance floor, not dancing with anyone else. I have a little bit of a gap all around me, like people are giving me my space, because I was crazy and on fire. It was my way of dealing with my shyness.”

When she danced at gatherings with her third-generation Mexican-American family, Constance could express how she felt—without words. She blocked out others by looking at the ground. “I was in my own little world,” she says. She learned to be true to herself, not letting the perceptions of others hold her back. It’s a lesson that has guided her career, launching her from break dancer in the underground music scene of 1980s Los Angeles to acting roles on the big screen in Tortilla Soup, Selena and My Family/Mi Familia.

Today she is one of the most visible Latinas on television, playing regular character roles in both a comedy and drama series in the same season. She plays wife and mother Angie López on George López and firebrand lawyer Nina González on the critically acclaimed PBS series American Family.

Her accomplishment seems to defy the statistics: Hispanics make up only 4 percent of regular characters on prime time television, according to a recent study by UCLA’s Chicano Research Center.

“I think anyone working on television is defying the odds,” says Chon Noriega, the center’s director and co-author of the report, Looking for Latino Regulars on Prime-Time Television: The Fall 2004 Season.

“And I think Constance Marie is part of an interesting phenomena with the rise of Latino-themed programs,” Noriega adds. “Because she is talented and because there is a sudden need for Latino actors, you have a small group of actors who are sometimes in two, sometimes three, series.”

While filming the current season of American Family titled “Journey of Dreams”, Constance worked seven days a week for three months to juggle her roles on both shows. Her call time required her to be on the PBS set by 4 a.m.
Constance says she feels guilty sometimes about her success. “If you never had money, even having money gives you anxiety,” she explains. She grew up poor, raised by her mother and grandmother in a diverse pocket of Los Angeles that straddled an Orthodox Jewish neighborhood and predominantly-gay West Hollywood. Home was a series of apartments. Dancing and watching television allowed her to explore different worlds. When she heard that Linda Carter was part Mexican, she had a vision of what she wanted.
“She had a good job. She had a good car. She dressed well. She was super-power Wonder Woman. She could do anything and she kind of looked like my mom,” Constance recalls.

In 1987, she was selected from a group of 500 to perform on tour with David Bowie. But not until she tried to break into acting did she realize she was stuck in the “Latin box.”

“It was like, ‘No, you can’t read for this role. You can only read for this role.’ And I was like, ‘Why? I am the same age. I understand this role. I connect to it emotionally.’ And they were like, ‘We are not going that way.’ Which was the ethnic way. And I was, ‘Oh. I am Latin.’ They know how much more Latin I am than even I know.”

If being a Latina has both helped her career and been an enormous sense of pride, it has also been a barrier and a cause of frustration. She’s been told she’s too Latin, and not Latin enough because she doesn’t speak Spanish. Her response reflects both sass and a sensibility to the neighborhood where she grew up: “A third-generation Jew doesn’t necessarily speak Hebrew.”

After she was cast as dancer Penny Johnson on the 1988 TV series Dirty Dancing, she chose not to work for a year because she didn’t like the parts that came her way.
“The only power I have is in the choices I make for work. And that’s where I thought, ‘You can’t put me in a box. I won’t let you,’ ” she says.

She also chose to drop her real-life last name—López—putting her in the ironic position today of playing a character named Angie López. She says she made the decision after flipping through the Academy of Motion Pictures’ players’ directory and noticing a crowded field under the name López. (For the record, the current Academy players’ directory has 52 entries under López and 282 under Jones.)

She says she was not trying to Anglicize herself. “Look at me. I’m brown. And I have brown hair and an ass. You are not going to think I am Swedish, no matter what my name is.”

Constance is certainly not the only one. For decades, actors have changed their names to fit Hollywood: Rita Hayworth, Raquel Welch, Martin Sheen are just a few examples. Even actors who are not Latino, such as Jennifer Aniston, of Greek descent, have modified their names. (Her family’s real name is Anistonopoulos.)

“[Many actors] said they did it to at least get in the door. And once you get in the door, talent can play a role,” says Noriega, of UCLA’s Chicano Studies Center.

Casting in Hollywood remains racially defined, he adds. “If your name doesn’t necessarily signal Latinidad it’s quite likely that that can help you get into a certain casting call.”
If her work sends out one message, Constance says she hopes it is this: “You can be empowered. And maybe it’s not being an actor. It’s being a lawyer. It’s being a stay-at-home mom. It’s being a schoolteacher. Whatever. You can define your own life.”

The two leading Latinas she portrays have empowered her, Constance says, and are slowly eroding the often stereotypical perception of Hispanics on television as maids, spitfires and drug dealers.

Playing Angie López, an intelligent and nurturing mother who recently went back to work as a cosmetics saleswoman, has helped Constance “warm to the fact of having children,” she says. “Just getting the chance to explore all of this has been wonderful.”

She credits the show’s use of humor for creating a “cultural bridge” that resonates with viewers of all backgrounds. Loosely based on the life of standup comedian George López, the show depicts contemporary American family life from a bicultural perspective. Angie and her husband live with George’s tough-loving mom while raising their 15-year-old daughter and 9-year-old son, whose daily concerns range from learning to drive to reading with dyslexia. One of the show’s most powerful symbols is the family’s modern kitchen. The message: This is a middle-class family living in the suburbs.

“It’s a warm, loving family representation. It has all the balls in the air and it’s funny,” Constance says. “One of the things that I think is great about humor is that while you have people laughing and they have their guard down, you can also explore really poignant things and truth.”
Evoking the strong-willed Nina González on American Family has required Constance to tap her innate “survivor strength” and confront her inner shy girl. Nina, a recent law school grad, is constantly at odds with her father Jess (Edward James Olmos) over his machista attitudes and conservative politics.

This season, the family’s loyalties are strained to the breaking point as Nina’s older brother Conrado (Yancey Arias) is sent to Iraq as a doctor in the U.S. Army. Jess reflects on the sacrifices he made to put Conrado through medical school while recalling his family’s perilous migration to the United States during the Mexican Revolution. Amidst the emotional turmoil, he kicks Nina out of the house.

The show prompted this comment from a Columbus, Ohio viewer during an April 19 online chat with American Family’s creator and executive producer, Gregory Nava, on The Washington Post’s website.

“Nina is my favorite character on American Family. Her moving out of the house reminded me of the dynamics in my family when I opposed the Vietnam War. … Please keep up the good work. The writing, acting, and production for American Family are first rate! Thank You! Robert.”
Constance also thanks Nava for creating Nina’s character. “It ended up being a gift for me,” she says. “Making it political and Spanish, he helped introduce me to a lot of my culture.”

Nava has been in a unique position to see Constance’s artistry grow. In 1995, she landed her first movie role as Toni Sánchez in My Family/Mi Familia, which Nava co-wrote and directed. Two years later, she donned heavy makeup and a 20-pound body suit to appear older and heavier as Marcela Quintanilla, mother of the slain Tejana star, in Selena, which Nava also directed.

The Academy Award-nominated writer/director/producer says one of Constance’s strengths as an actress is her ability to “go moment to moment in the scene and stay with her partner and let the magic happen.”

“She has grown more confident and comfortable with her talent,” Nava says. “We have reached a point now where I almost have to hardly direct her. Before I get the words out, she will tell me. She already knows because we have worked together so much. So it is a joy.”

Now a proud homeowner, Constance lives in a comfortable San Fernando Valley home with her fiancé Kent Katich, who owns and operates his own yoga studio. She has two cats, Homey and Little Guy. To unwind, she enjoys hiking and creating pastel drawings.

Of her life she says, “It rocks … I am so content where I am right now, that I can’t imagine anything else that could be better.”