Q: How did you get into acting and what drew you to it?
A: I actually got into acting through a work-study job with UCLA Early Outreach. We’d go into schools and perform assemblies, and that’s where something clicked for me. It wasn’t about wanting to be famous. I loved connecting with an audience and making somebody feel something.
Once I realized that, I took acting seriously. I trained with Howard Fine and Silvana Gallardo and did Groundlings. My first film was Out for Justice, and I kept working from there.
For me, acting has always been about connection. You step into somebody else’s life for a minute, and if you do it right, you make people understand that person a little differently.
Q: Now as a fan of classic movies I have to ask this. Were there any classic movie stars who inspired you?
A: I grew up loving musicals. Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Rita Hayworth. I loved that whole era.
My siblings took me to see stage productions like Annie, The Phantom of the Opera, and Cats, and I remember being completely drawn to the stage. I knew I wanted to be up there somehow.
I wasn’t a professional singer or dancer, but in my mind, if I was acting, I could do anything. That was part of the magic for me. Acting gave me permission to imagine myself doing things I never thought I could do in regular life.
Q: How were you cast in Mi Vida Loca?
A: By that point I was already working professionally. Out for Justice had been my first film, and I was training seriously as an actor. Allison Anders was doing something unusual with Mi Vida Loca. She mixed professional actors with actual young people from Echo Park.
I was cast in that mix as Baby Doll. I honestly don’t remember every detail of the audition now. What I do remember is that being part of that film became much bigger than any of us could have known at the time.
A: Nélida really was Whisper, and she played herself. Allison spent a lot of time getting to know the Echo Park Locas before filming. The real homegirls were involved as consultants, so a lot of the language and detail came directly out of that culture.
The movie explains Sad Girl and Mousie. Those names were treated almost like they had been passed down from older generations of homegirls. Mousie got the name because she was little. Sad Girl basically got the name that was left, even though she wasn’t particularly sad at the time.
Some names were connected directly to real people. Joker Bird, for example, was the actual gang name of Rudy Bermudez, and Panchito Gomez played the character based on him.
As far as Baby Doll, Giggles, Big Sleepy and every individual name, I honestly don’t remember who came up with each one. Allison worked so closely with the homegirls that a lot of what was written and what came organically from Echo Park blended together.
Q: I know casts on some films grow so close they regard themselves as family. Was that the case with Mi Vida Loca? Have you stayed in touch with the rest of the cast?
We really did become family in a way, and some of those relationships continued long after the movie ended.
I became especially close with Angel Aviles, who played Sad Girl. We went to each other’s baby showers. She came to my house, I went to hers, and over the years we were in and out of each other’s lives.
Then my husband died, and Angel reached out to me. She said, "Do you realize we’ve become a cult classic? You have fans out there."
I don’t think she even realized what that did for me at the time. I had spent so many years being a wife and raising my children, and after losing my husband, I was trying to figure out who I was again. Angel reminded me of a part of myself I had almost forgotten. She reminded me that I was Christina the actress and that I had been part of something that mattered to people. I will always love her for that. I also stayed connected with a lot of the Echo Park locals through social media. Later I reconnected with Verónica Arellano, who played Stranger, and Angel and I started doing meet-and-greets. We ended up traveling around the country doing them.
It was unbelievable. People came out in droves. I used to joke that it felt like we were The Beatles. We would walk in and people were crying, screaming, wanting pictures and telling us what the movie meant to them.
What surprised me most was how young so many of the fans were. At first I would look at these young girls and think, "Where are your mothers?" Then I realized, no, they’re the fans. They came to see us.
There were babies, mothers, grandmothers, generations of women, but so many young girls. That was when I really understood that Mi Vida Loca hadn’t simply survived as an old movie. It had been passed down.
A mother showed it to her daughter. An older sister showed it to a younger sister. Then that girl found Baby Doll or Sad Girl or Mousie and saw something in one of us that spoke to her.
That has probably been one of the greatest gifts the movie has given me. Thirty years later, I get to meet the women, and now the girls, who made these characters part of their own lives.
A: I think its biggest impact is that Chicana women got to be at the center of the story.
We weren’t somebody’s girlfriend in the background. We weren’t there just to explain the male character. These women had friendships, children, jealousy, loyalty, humor, anger, mistakes and dreams. They were complicated. And the film didn’t clean them up to make them acceptable.
That mattered, especially then. For Chicanas, there was something powerful about simply seeing ourselves. Our clothes. Our hair. The way people talked. The friendships. The loyalty. The neighborhood. Things Hollywood either ignored or stereotyped were suddenly taking up the whole screen.
I think that’s why younger generations keep finding it. They may not have lived that exact life, but they recognize something in those women.
To me, that’s the legacy. Mi Vida Loca said these girls were worthy of having their stories told. I’m very proud that Baby Doll is still part of that.
Q: Besides playing Baby Doll in Mi Vida Loca, I think you may be best known for your guest appearance as Esmeralda on Married with Children, but you did guest star on several other shows, including Hangin’ with Mr. Cooper, 7th Heaven, and Chicago Hope. Do you have a favorite out of your television guest appearances? What was your best experience on television?
A: I really enjoyed doing the USA Network shows, especially Silk Stalkings and High Tide. They were fun. You’d come into an established cast, work hard for a week and bond with everybody fast.
Television moved quickly. You were shooting an hour of TV in a week instead of spending months on a movie, and I liked that pace. You came in, did your work and became this little family for a week. High Tide was especially fun, and Rick Springfield was honestly one of the sweetest people I ever worked with. Everybody was so welcoming. I have really good memories from those shows. But my television "one that got away" was Buddies. I was cast as Pamela, the neighbor, on the show with Dave Chappelle, and it was incredibly exciting.
Dave was amazing. I remember him telling me, "Girl, we’re going all the way. This is the next Seinfeld. Nine to twelve seasons. I got you."
I was thinking, this is it. I’m not somebody who counts her chickens before they hatch, but this one felt different. The show got picked up. We thought we were going to have a series. Then it went through changes and it just didn’t work out.
That will always be the one I think about and wonder, what if? And the irony is that Dave Chappelle turned out to be Dave Chappelle.
A: I never had one particular role I spent my life thinking should have been mine.
I did always want to do a musical because I grew up loving Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers and Rita Hayworth, and I loved the stage. I wasn’t a professional singer or dancer, but I had this funny confidence about acting. Put me in the costume, give me the character and somehow I was going to figure it out.
There was also a funny Hollywood milestone for me. Somebody once told me you never really make it in Hollywood until you play a hooker. So when I got cast as Eva in Quiet Days in Hollywood, alongside Hilary Swank, I was actually excited. I thought, okay, I’ve made it now.
One performance I wish more people had seen was a little film called Gut Feeling. It had an incredible cast, including George Lazenby, Susan Blakely, Julie Hagerty, Stephen Root and Bruce Weitz.
Something happened on that film. I did all the work I’d been taught to do, and then it just clicked. I stopped feeling like Christina playing a character. I felt like I was her.
It’s hard to explain unless you’re an actor. You prepare and prepare, and every once in a while you get to that place where you’re not thinking about the lines anymore. You’re just living it.
I remember leaving that experience thinking, that’s why I became an actor. To this day, I think it was some of my best work.
Q: As a Chicana actress, did you encounter any racism or sexism in the film and television industries? Do you think you lost any parts due to your ethnicity?
A: Absolutely there were limitations, but they weren’t always presented to you as, "You’re not getting this because you’re Mexican."
It was more subtle than that. You saw it in the parts that were available to you in the first place. As a young Latina actress, there were certain boxes people knew how to put you in, and not nearly enough roles where you were simply a woman with a full life and a full story.
Did I lose a particular role because of my ethnicity? I can’t honestly point to one part and say I know that for a fact. I wasn’t in those rooms when those decisions were made. But I do believe my ethnicity affected the opportunities I was considered for. Sometimes the door closes before you ever get to audition.
Sexism was part of the business too. You were a young woman in an industry that paid enormous attention to your age, your body, how attractive you were and how marketable somebody thought you were.
At the same time, I never wanted being Chicana to be something I had to overcome. It was part of me. I just wanted the same opportunity to play complicated women that everybody else had.
A: For me, it was better in the Nineties. That’s part of why Chicanos have such a connection to that time. We were actually being seen.
Stand and Deliver, Blood In Blood Out, Mi Vida Loca, Mi Familia. These weren’t films that just cast a Latino actor. Our culture and our experiences were the story.
Then somewhere along the way, Hollywood lost interest. That’s frustrating because our dollar hasn’t disappeared. Latino audiences are watching, subscribing and buying tickets. So why are our stories still being ignored?
With the temperature of this country right now, I think telling Latino stories matters more than ever. People will look back on this period historically, and you can’t tell that history without telling what Latino families were living through. Not just political or immigration stories. The everyday ones too: family, love, fear, humor, work and identity.
The business has changed so much I don’t even know who "Hollywood" is anymore. Studios, streamers, independent producers, filmmakers doing their own thing. Maybe some of these stories have to come from us. I don’t know if we can do it entirely on our own, but Hollywood doesn’t get to ignore a community this large and still expect our money.
We were seen in the Nineties. I want us to be seen again, but this time with a hand in telling the stories.
Kindly,
Christina Solis Caron
