Defined Magazine

America Ferrera On Humanity Storytelling And Her Powerful New Role

10th October, 2025

Words by Hayley Campbell

Photos by Rachell Smith

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When America Ferrera was little, she would lay in bed thinking about death. “I think when you’re a kid and you realise that your parents could die, or your dog could die, or your best friend – I just remember a lot of late nights lying in bed being like, what is that like? What is nothing? Like, what does nothing feel like? Or is there… something?” she says, wryly. But she gets it. It’s the existential fear that older minds still struggle to fathom: “The mystery of it can be all-consuming and all-encompassing.”

In her new film, The Lost Bus, Ferrera plays a school teacher who has to face death along with 22 eight-year-olds in her care. Based on a true story, the film stars Matthew McConaughey as the bus driver who rescued this class of second graders, along with their teacher (Ferrera), from the deadliest wildfire in California history. In 2018, this fire burned for 17 days. Over 13,500 homes were destroyed. 85 people died. And in the middle of it all, this one school bus somehow made it out. “It’s a story that’s rooted in real human experience and real human resilience,” says Ferrera. One of the most interesting parts of it, for her, was how these two strangers were thrown together, knew nothing about each other, and now had to live through this shared horror. “It strips away all of the labels and the layers of our identity and brings them both to the most human truth, which is you get your life for a finite amount of time, and there’s only so much you can choose and control, and at a certain point, we all have to face our mortality. I thought that was fascinating to explore – you know, just a regular old person who wakes up to do their job, teaching second grade or driving a bus full of kids, and then to be called upon to do something that’s unimaginable.”

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Wildfires in California are becoming more frequent and more deadly; as a California native, Ferrera is all too aware. The Lost Bus is an action film, but it’s also a story about the effects of climate change, something urgent and real. For Ferrera, that’s the heart of what she’s interested in: stories that tell us something about how we are living, right now. “I love art that is relevant,” she says. “And I don’t really think it’s possible to separate the personal from the political. The magic of storytelling, in my opinion, is that it transcends putting the personal and the political in separate boxes – it personalises what we intellectualise and rationalise. Watching a movie is an opportunity to transcend that way of thinking and seeing things and instead feel an experience, feel a journey, and hopefully complicate what we try to make so easy. You know, where your beliefs and your arguments go out the window, and then you’re just faced with what’s real and what’s in front of you.”

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Ferrera has always used her platform for politics: supporting Hillary Clinton’s campaigns from 2008, taking the stage at Democratic National Conventions, and becoming a founding member of the Time's Up legal defense fund. She believes that using her voice for the things she feels strongly about is all part of the same art. “As much as our culture would like us to believe that acting and politics are separate lanes, or separate industries – it’s all storytelling,” she says. “All the news, all the politics, it’s all about the stories we tell, the stories we believe, and and whether or not they’re making our lives better or worse, and whether they’re connecting us to each other or doing the opposite. I think art is justice. And I think that the part of me that loves art and the part of me that was drawn to telling stories and being an actress is the same part of me that’s drawn to be engaged and participate in the world.”

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You seem like someone driven by a purpose. What do you believe that is?

Since I was very young, the core of what I responded to in storytelling was how connected to other people it made me feel. Like, oh, this story starring Tom Hanks, about an astronaut, that is so outside of any world I've ever stepped into, somehow reflects my hopes and dreams, reflects what it feels like to be me alive in the world. I'm connected, I'm real, I'm part of what's going on in the bigger world. And that feeling of being seen and made real through the storytelling has so much power. We have so much power to feel connected to one another through the stories we tell. And there's so many stories we haven't told.

My first movie role was in a movie called Real Women Have Curves. I was 17 years old, and it was so specific. It was about a Mexican-American daughter of immigrants, growing up in Los Angeles, going to high school, working in a fabric factory with her family, and having this dream to go to college. It could not have been more specific. The shock that I experienced was when that movie came out and traveled the world – just how many other people saw themselves in her, everywhere we went. Gay, straight, old, young, black, white. They saw themselves in this character. I was really young, but that was such an education for me. It’s our superpower, to connect. It feels almost like magic.

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I was going to ask if there was a moment that changed you, or defined who you are, but you seem like you came out fully formed?

I have been – sometimes to my own frustration! – kind of the same person. At some point in my 20s I was mad at myself for making such strong choices so early on. Feeling like, Well, who would I be if I had explored other options? Because there's so many things I love to do. I went to university to study international relations and was fascinated with global politics. And at one point I thought I'd be a lawyer. I love physical therapy – I could have been a physical therapist. I'm passionate and interested in a lot of things. And so there was definitely a point where I was like, Why was I so stubborn? Why did I pick so early on? I think that I maybe freaked out a little bit, about that certainty so early on.

But my saving grace was that I realised that there was no rule that said I couldn't be all the things I wanted to be. There was no rule that I had to stop caring about social political issues because I was an actress. That I had to stop engaging. That I had to not pursue my hobbies and my interests. I get to be a whole person. I built my identity around becoming an actress and that was my value, and that was my worth, and that's where I felt worthy. But I think realising that that had a limit, that I'd had the success, that I'd gotten all the things I thought I wanted, and I didn't feel that sense of worth and wholeness as a person, forced me to build my identity beyond it. I realised I was allowed to care about other things, and do other things, and value other things, and give my time to other things. And that acting wasn't the only thing that made me a worthy person on the planet.

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When do you feel at your most creative?

When I’m with a group of people, whether that's in rehearsal, or on set, or even in a brainstorm session of what this show could be or what this movie could be. I think one of the ways to feel really creative is to be in a process with other people. I also am learning how to find that for myself, as an individual. Because I'm an actress and because the majority of my career has been having to be hired by other people. Like, you can't really stand in front of the mirror and act. It's not the same thing. Writers can go into their office and write and they're doing their work – actors, not so much. You're waiting for other people to call on you, or you have a group of people you're doing it with. It requires other people. And one of the really exciting things about branching out – I’ve started writing some scripts, which is also a challenge and scary to me – is learning how to find that creative place and flow and excitement on my own without a 200 person crew, and a massive audience, and an entire cast around you. Like, how do I find that for me? I've had some minor successes of getting past the fears and the doubts and the dread of the blank page, and actually getting into a flow of, Oh! I'm excited by this thing I'm creating! I'm excited by this idea and I can't wait to get back to it! And so, I've started to feel it at times on my own, which is really exciting. And I learned a lot of it from my husband – he's a writer and a painter and an incredible filmmaker, but spends most of his time in his own discipline, on his own, and it’s so scary to me. I need a call time and a call sheet and a 200 person crew waiting. Like, how do I get to my creativity on my own and in my living room?!

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One of the other newer experiences is being with my children, who are five and seven. Dropping into their world and just being with them, or telling them a story, or making stuff up. I go back to that feeling of when it was just for me and my best friend and we're choreographing a dance. Just for us. And so being with my kids and being so present and creative with them is like a shot of adrenaline. The purest form of our creativity is when it’s just for us and it's just for our imaginations.

The Lost Bus is streaming now on Apple TV.