“I didn’t want to be a star anymore, I wanted to be an actress and with all those gowns they put on me, all of those millions of feathers, I couldn’t be. I chose instead the chance to be a pioneer in the movie industry of my country, an exciting new challenge.” Dolores Del Río. Latinas in the United States: A Historical Encyclopedia.

Born Lolita Dolores Asúnsolo Martinez y López Negrete in Durango, Mexico, her privileged family fled their home and settled in Mexico City during the Mexican Revolution. Married at age fifteen to Jaime Martínez Del Río, the director, Edwin Carewe approached Dolores while she was on her honeymoon about making films. The couple went to Hollywood and the film, What Price Glory? (1926) made her a star. Del Río appeared in Resurrection (1927), The Loves of Carmen (1927), and Evangeline (1929). By the 1930s divorced and considered a leading lady, Del Río starred in the most memorable films of that period: The Girl from the Rio (1932), Bird of Paradise (1932), and Flying down to Río (1933). However, the late 1930s brought a reversal of fortune in Hollywood. Del Rio left California and returned to Mexico City. There she entered into a new, exciting era of Mexican filmmaking. During this period she starred in Flor Silvestre (1943), María Candelaria (1944), La malquerida (1949) and La cucaracha (1960). Winner of the Ariel for Flor Silvestre, she won three more Ariels for Las abadonadas (1944), Doña Perfecta (1950), and El niño y la niebla (1953).