AllMovie

The ravishingly beautiful, raven-haired actress Maya Zapata made a series of quick and seemingly effortless back-and-forth transitions between roles in her native Mexico and mainstream Hollywood parts. Though she began with youth roles -- as in the ill-fated 1989 adventure saga The Old Gringo -- in time producers began casting her as sensual, impassioned Hispanic girlfriends or lovers, as in the 2004 drama Caribe. She also accepted bit parts that called for an ethnic typecast, as in Tommy Lee Jones' acclaimed Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada(2005). Zapata landed her first lead opposite Jennifer Lopez in Gregory Nava's harrowing, shocking social-conscience thriller Bordertown (2007) -- as a young factory worker who barely escapes from a rape and strangling and then joins forces with reporter Lopez to bring her aggressors to justice.