Elizabeth Pena

Born: September 23, 1959; Died: October 14, 2014.

Elizabeth Pena, who has died after a short illness aged 55, bribed a Disney security guard to let her into auditions for the 1986 comedy Down and Out in Beverly Hills. It kick-started a career that included major roles in a string of big movies, the title character in a networked American sitcom and most recently a recurring character in Modern Family.

Pena was described as "smouldering" in early films, including Adrian Lyne's big budget psychological thriller Jacob's Ladder (1990). She was up against Julia Roberts and Madonna for the role of the girlfriend of Tim Robbins, a disturbed Vietnam veteran who starts seeing demons.

"They wanted Julia Roberts, Andie MacDowell or Michelle Pfeiffer," she said in an interview in 2001. "At some point they wanted Susan Sarandon and Madonna wanted the part. They auditioned all of them.

"I begged to be auditioned. I begged and begged and when I auditioned, the chemistry was right and Adrian and I were just taken with each other. I auditioned for six months, twice a week. The reason I kept going back was because Adrian was literally fighting for me to get the role."

Pena's own character seemingly turns into a red-skinned, hollow-eyed monster. The film retains a loyal following and there has been talk of a remake.

Pena had put on a lot of weight by the time she played Sofia Vergara's mother in the hit sitcom Modern Family, which screens on Sky in the UK, although she was only 13 years older than Vergara.

Born Elizabeth Maria Pena into a Cuban family in the city of Elizabeth in New Jersey, she spent her childhood partly in the US and partly in Cuba. Her parents were both involved in the arts and her father Mario was one of the founders of the Latin-American Theatre Ensemble in New York.

Pena showed early promise as an actress, she attended New York's High School of Performing Arts and made her film debut as a teenager 1979 in El Super (1979), a low budget, Spanish-language comedy about a family of Cuban immigrants in New York.

Other small parts followed, in film and television. But it was the role of Carmen the maid in Down and Out in Beverly Hills that gave her her big break. She was not discouraged by an agent telling her that she was not being put forward for audition because she was not attractive enough. She determined to get an audition under her own steam.

Richard Dreyfuss and Bette Midler played a wealthy Beverly Hills couple, she was the maid who is having an affair with Dreyfuss and Nick Nolte played the tramp who tries to drown himself in their pool.

The film was a huge hit and Pena went on to co-starring roles in La Bamba (1987), Batteries Not Included (1987), the thriller Blue Steel (1989), Free Willy 2 (1995), the John Sayles drama Lone Star (1996) and Rush Hour (1998), the hit action comedy in which Jackie Chan, One of the founders of the Hispanic Organization of Latin Actors, she campaigned for more roles and for a wider range of parts for Hispanic-American actors. "In the United States all Spanish-speaking people are lumped into one category," she said. "But we're all so different."

She broke new ground for Hispanic actresses when she landed the title role in the short-lived American sitcom I Married Dora (1987-88), albeit her character was a housekeeper and an illegal immigrant. She has to marry her boss to escape deportation.

In later years Pena also did a lot of voice work, including voicing the villain Mirage in Pixar's The Incredibles (2004). Recently she completed work on the first series of a new American crime series called Matador.

Pena's first marriage ended in divorce. In 1994 she married for a second time, to Hans Rolla, a carpenter. She is survived by her husband and two teenage children Fiona and Kaelan.