Cristela Alonzo Bio: In Her Own Words – Video Exclusive, News, Photos

Cristela Alonzo is an American actress, comedian, producer and writer who is best known for creating and starring in the short-lived ABC sitcom Cristela. 

CRISTELA ALONZO BIO: AGE, EARLY LIFE AND CAREER

Alonzo (born January 6, 1979; Cristela Alonzo: age 38) was born in Hidalgo, Texas, and has three older siblings. Her mother Natalia Gonzales worked at a Mexican restaurant for around 20 years and her father was Adalberto Alonzo. Both are Mexican.

Alonzo has said she never met her abusive father, who reportedly died in 2009. Her mother raised her and her siblings — sister Julisa Maria and brothers Eloy Eduardo and Ruben G. — in San Juan, Texas, a town near the border with Mexico.

Throughout her early childhood years, on her mother’s day off each week, Alonzo grew up with her paternal grandmother in Reynosa, Mexico, on just the other side of the border.

Until she was roughly eight years old, Alonzo and her family were homeless, and were living in a diner. Alonzo only spoke Spanish at home but learned English from watching TV, which served as a means of escape from all the crimes occurring near where she lived. Alonzo even translated some TV shows from English to Spanish for her single mother, and wore full-face makeup and costumes to act them out.

Alonzo, who was raised Catholic, graduated from Pharr-San Juan-Alamo High School. She then enrolled in Webster University near St. Louis to study theater, but dropped out because she stopped being able to afford tuition. She returned home to Dallas and helped her sister take care of her ailing mother, who passed away in 2002.

In 2003, Alonzo began working as an office manager at the Addison Improv in Dallas. There, she began doing stand-up and eventually moved to Los Angeles to pursue stand-up comedy full-time.

Alonzo journeyed on a bus alongside fellow Latin American comedian Carlos Mencia, a Honduran-American who was becoming a rising star at the time, as well as other comedians. Alonzo ended up performing at several college comedy gigs.

Alonzo appeared in a 30-minute segment of Comedy Central’s The Half Hour on June 7, 2013. She has also done stand-up sets on Conan, Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, Gabriel Iglesias Presents Stand Up Revolution, Showtime, Last Comic Standing, The Late Show with Stephen Colbertand Live at Gotham.

CRISTELA ALONZO BIO: CRISTELA AND LATER CAREER

In 2013, Alonzo created the pilot for her a semi-autobiographical sitcom called Cristela alongside TV producer Becky Clements. It was picked up to become a full series for the 2014-15 season. After 13 episodes were originally given for season one, nine more episodes were granted to bring the total season 1 number to 22 episodes. The series — shot on several cameras before a live audience — was cancelled after season 1 ended on May 7, 2015. The show was about a Mexican-American law school graduate named Cristela Hernandez who lives in Dallas and struggles to balance her professional and persona life. Gabriel Iglesias co-stars. She is the first Latina woman to create, produce, and star in her own major-network American television series.

She also voiced the character of Cruz Ramirez in the 2017 Disney-Pixar movie Cars 3. 

CRISTELA ALONZO INTERVIEW: CARS 3

In November 2017, Alonzo sat down with uInterview for an exclusive interview about her Disney Pixar film Cars 3, in which she voiced a car named Cruz Ramirez, protagonist Lightning McQueen’s trainer and racing technician.

After discussing how she watched the Tony Awards on TV as a young child one day, Alonzo explained how she fell in love with acting and comedy and how she would translate shows for her mother from Spanish to English and also perform for her friends at school in makeup and costumes.

“I used to do episodes of The Golden Girls for my friends when I was in elementary school,” she said. “It’s just something that’s always been in me.”

She the went on to explain how not only she, but the rest of her family used comedy as an outlet to escape their harsh realities.

“We had a rough childhood, we didn’t have a lot of money, we were raised by a single mom. We used laughter to remind ourselves that, even though times are tough, we’re still very happy because we have each other.”

CRISTELA ALONZO BIO: BOYFRIENDS, HEIGHT, QUOTES, NET WORTH

Alonzo is 5-foot-9 and weighs 180 pounds. Although she has mentioned past boyfriends (not by name) on social media, no records of her past romantic relationships exist and she appears to be single. She lives in Lo Angeles, according to most reports.

She was reportedly named after the midwife who delivered her. The midwife ended up being her Cristela castmaste Maria Canals-Barrera’s husband’s (David Barrera) aunt.

Alonzo has an estimated net worth of $4 million, according to published reports.

Her Twitter and Instagram handles are both @cristela9.

Quotes:

“I couldn’t afford therapy, so I just watched ‘Frasier.’ Season 4 was a breakthrough.”

“I used to love ‘Murphy Brown’ as a kid. I didn’t even understand half of the jokes that were going on, but I loved the character so much that they stood out.”

“I did the ‘Wizard of Oz’ in third grade, and I was a witch.”

Watch Cristela Alonzo’s full uInterview video: