LATINO LEADERS

17 trailblazers CHANGING THEIR industries, THE U.S., AND THE world

- Moises Mendez II, Meg Zukin. Eliana Dockterman, Solcyré Burga, Chantelle Lee, Alana Semuels, Alice Park, Stephanie Zacharek, Megan McCluskey, Judy Berman, Nik Popli, Belinda Luscombe, Eliana Dockterman

CAMILA Mendes

ACTING AUTHENTICALLY

From her breakout role on Riverdale to her star turn in Do Revenge, Camila Mendes is no stranger to playing a seemingly unshakable, popular high school girl with complex emotions and motivations. But sometimes, she says, it can be "exhausting" to generate that kind of self-assuredness. "When I'm playing characters more like me, it's a different energy." After portraying the ambitious but out-of-place Ana Santos in the rom-com Upgraded, she said her dad told her it was nice to see her play a character truer to who she is.

Mendes, 30, says that while she's not looking to play only Latina characters, she always tries to infuse some sort of Latinidad into her roles so they feel more authentic to her. In Do Revenge and Upgraded, she was able to get the characters' names changed to root them in Latin heritage, she says. Most recently, she co-starred in Música, a movie she described as a celebration of Brazilian culture. She felt the weight of responsibility trying to do two things at once: provide positive representation for an underrepresented group and do it in a way that feels real and not forced. "It's really hard to walk that line," she says, but "if you stick to being authentic to yourself, then you can't really go wrong."

CRISTINA Rivera Garza

WRITING FOR JUSTICE