Happy and She Knows It

On a recent sunny morning in L.A., Ana de la Reguera drove to the set of Goliath with the top down on her Mini Cooper convertible, then got down to work with her leading man, Billy Bob Thornton. “We filmed an amazing scene and I thought, ‘I’m the luckiest person in the world,’” she says. “For me, that’s happiness.”

De la Reguera portrays a councilwoman gunning to be L.A.’s first Latina mayor in the second season of Amazon’s legal drama, debuting June 15. When her character, Marisol Silva, isn’t wheeling and dealing, she’s romancing attorney Billy McBride, played by Thornton, whom de la Reguera calls “the nicest and most talented person I’ve ever worked with.”

To prepare for the role, the raven-haired beauty — who’s also appeared in the Showtime revival of Twin Peaks and HBO’s Eastbound & Down — spent three weeks at City Hall shadowing Nury Martinez, who was at the time L.A.’s only Latina councilmember. “That was one of the fun parts of being an actor,” de la Reguera says, adding that she saw up close how politicians make painful choices.

The daughter of a former pageant queen, de la Reguera grew up in Veracruz, Mexico, aspiring to be a dancer. When the training lagged, “I thought, ‘What’s another thing that I can do on a stage? Oh, acting!’” She studied at two of Mexico’s top entertainment schools and at 19 started landing regular gigs on telenovelas, eventually winning awards for her TV and film work.

Even so, she remained unknown to audiences north of the border, and Hollywood seemed like a dream beyond her reach.

That is, until producers for the 2006 Jack Black vehicle Nacho Libre came to Mexico looking to fill the role of a put-upon nun. De la Reguera had an inside edge, having spent her youth belly-laughing over broad 1980s comedies such as Revenge of the Nerds and Better Off Dead. “I got the humor in those films,” she says. “I think that’s why I got the part.”

Since moving to L.A., she’s racked up roles on Starz’s Power, USA’s Royal Pains, The CW’s Jane the Virgin and From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series on the El Rey Network. And while the actress calls Nacho Libre her standout performance, she jokes that fans of Netflix’s Narcos — in which she played a member of the M-19 guerrillas — “freak out” when they see her.

But inside, de la Reguera is the excited one. “A girl from Veracruz, Mexico, is here in America being embraced and getting incredible opportunities!” she exclaims. “What else could I ask for?” 

This article originally appeared in emmy magazine, Issue No. 6, 2018