Celebrity Biographies
Elizabeth Pena
Elizabeth Peña died on October 14, 2014 at the age of 55 as a result of “a brief illness” the nature of which has not been disclosed, at Cedars Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles. The Cuban-born actress starred in titles such as “La bamba” and “Jacob’s Ladder.”
Born on September 23, 1959, Peña was named after the city in which she was born, Elizabeth, in New Jersey. She came from a family of Cuban immigrants. Her father, Mario Peña, was a writer, actor and theater director. Elizabeth Peña studied at the High School of Performing Arts, in New York, where she had Ving Rhames and Esai Morales as classmates , with whom she would later coincide in the cinema.
She made her film debut with El super , by Leon Ichaso , where she played a character very similar to herself, the daughter of some Cuban emigrants. She subsequently played one of the main characters in La Bamba , Ritchie Valens biopic, where she was the girlfriend of the famous singer. In Our Wonderful Allies , produced by Steven Spielberg , she was the Latino neighbor of the block of buildings that some small aliens help to stand up to the ambitious company that wants to evict them.
The end of the 80’s marked its golden age. She was also best friends with police officer Jamie Lee Curtis in Kathryn Bigelow ‘s Blue Steel , and the girlfriend of hallucinatory ex-soldier Tim Robbins in the terrifying Jacob’s Ladder .
Later she would be a police officer in Rush Hour and a widow in Lone Star . He was also present in various films with a clear Latin flavor, such as Tortilla Soup (by the Spanish María Ripoll ), How The Garcia Girls Spent Their Summer, Nothing Like The Holidays , and La ciudad perdida , directed by another illustrious representative of the Cuban exile community, Andy Garcia .
Peña also worked on television, and occasionally directed a chapter of several series. She was the mother of Sofía Vergara on Modern Family , in a hilarious episode in which she insisted that her imminent grandson be named Fulgencio. The same year she died, she appeared in the first season of Matador , where she played the mother of the protagonist, played by Gabriel Luna.
The Latino community in Hollywood was especially saddened by his death. “You paved the way for us,” said Eva Longoria . “My heart has been broken,” says Zoe Saldaña .