(Los Angeles – Los Angeles Times) «It’s a story that reads like a fairy tale: Yalitza Aparicio, a young teaching college student, attends a casting call in her hometown of Tlaxiaco, Mexico, at the urging of her older sister. Somehow she gets the role — which is not just any role, but the lead in the critically acclaimed “Roma,” directed by Mexican filmmaker Alfonso Cuarón. The story doesn’t end there. Aparicio not only lands an Oscar nomination for leading actress, she becomes only the second Mexican actress and the first indigenous woman ever to do so…
“She’s super sharp,” says Cuarón, who makes the point that to confuse Aparicio with the docile household worker she plays on screen would be a mistake. “She’s completely different than the character she creates with Cleo.”
On the afternoon I meet her in West Hollywood, she is indeed sharp — and warm and witty — despite the fact that she’s been doing photo shoots and interviews for almost seven hours by the time we connect. While the attention that has been heaped upon her has been unexpected, she is keenly aware of the ways in which she has become a symbol for Mexico’s indigenous people.
“Perhaps I haven’t fully absorbed the Oscar nomination,” she says, “but I know that everything that I am doing — if I do something wrong, they might think we are all that way. So I have to take good care of that image, our image.”»
Mexico Today USA 