Latin Heat News Service
January 6
Cristela Alonzo was born on January 6, 1979, in San Juan, Texas. As an 8-year-old girl, Alonzo was captivated by the TV classic sitcom, The Golden Girls (1985). So it was a dream come true when in 2014 her own comedy sitcom Cristela aired on ABC, and at least for one season, she became “golden”, and the first Latina to star, write, and produce her own TV comedy series on a major TV network.
She started doing stand-up while working as an office manager at the Addison Improv, and finally in 2006 Alonzo got her first break in Los Angeles when she was hired to write on a Comedy Central show. That led her to be a semi-finalist on the TV show, Last Comic Standing. In 2013, she did a 30-minute segment of Comedy Central’s The Half Hour and this pretty much sealed her staying power as a television comedienne.
A sought after voice-over performer, Alonzo voiced the character of Cruz Ramirez in the Disney-Pixar film Cars 3. In 2017, she released a Netflix stand-up special titled, Cristela Alonzo: Lower Classy. Most recently, she did a voiceover in the season finale of Lin-Manuel Miranda #HisDarkMaterials and continues her VO character in and The Casagrandes on Nickelodeon.
In 2019 Alsonzo added author to her list of credits when her book Alonzo’s book Music to My Years: A Mixtape-Memoir of Growing Up and Standing Up was published The memoir release is accompanied by a stand-up tour called My Affordable Care Act.
Recently, she worked on the comedy The Upshaws for Netflix, and on the film Coast, which is in post-production.
Featured Photo: Koury Angelo
A clip of Alonzo in her sitcom Cristela on ABC.
