Ivonne Coll

The Crown That Was Left Over

Ivonne Coll won the Miss Puerto Rico pageant in 1967. But she didn't want to be just a pretty face on a gala runway. That crown was her ticket out of her hometown of Fajardo to make a living on the stages of New York and Los Angeles.

Television was not enough.

She moved to the United States to study acting with Lee Strasberg and Lucille Ball. She had no interest in the quick fame of Puerto Rican gossip magazines. By 1971 she already had her own variety show, titled A una mujer, but she decided to give it all up to train at the HB Studio in Manhattan.

In 1974 she landed a small role in The Godfather Part II. She played Yolanda, a singer at the Cuban club. Francis Ford Coppola chose her because he wanted a genuine Caribbean presence, and she fit the profile without any need for artifice.

Her Time at Coppola's Club

That shoot with Al Pacino did not guarantee her an immediate life of luxury. During the 1980s and 1990s she worked in regional theaters and on Broadway productions such as The Goodbye Girl. In 1989 she took part in the film Lean on Me alongside Morgan Freeman.

And the gamble paid off.

Her theater training got her into the circuit of long-running American series. In 1996 she appeared in The Bold and the Beautiful and later in NYPD Blue. She didn't go after leading roles because she knew that the Anglo-American market of that time typecast Latina actresses in supporting roles as maids or cleaners.

In 2011 she accepted the role of Regina Vasquez in the series Switched at Birth. This project gave her steady visibility on cable television. But the real media impact came a few years later with a project that broke the language rules of mainstream television.

The Silence That Spoke Spanish

In 2014 she joined the cast of Jane the Virgin to play Alba Villanueva. It was a risky decision for the production. Her character spoke exclusively in Spanish while the rest of the cast answered her in English.

No one expected a grandmother to be the moral backbone of the series.

This creative decision forced American audiences to read subtitles for five seasons and 100 episodes. Coll defended Alba's dignity without falling into caricature of the religious elderly woman. Thanks to this work, she received the award for Best Supporting Actress at the People's Choice Awards in 2016.

In 2020 she voiced a character in the animated series Elena of Avalor. Two years later, in 2022, she joined the cast of The Garcias for the HBO Max platform. In 2024 she recorded her role in the comedy Lopez vs Lopez on NBC, directed by Phill Lewis.

This episode, from 2024, was produced at Universal Studios in Los Angeles with a budget of two million dollars per episode.