Cristela Alonzo has explained that she never met her father, who died in 2009.
29 Facts About Cristela Alonzo
2.
Cristela Alonzo has three siblings, older sister Julisa Maria Alonzo and older brothers Eloy Eduardo Alonzo and Ruben G Alonzo.
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Cristela Alonzo's mother came from the small village of El Zancarron in San Luis Potosi, Mexico.
4.
Cristela Alonzo often went hungry, and had problems with skin pigment due to a lack of nutrition.
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Cristela Alonzo said her mother often used humor to offset the abject poverty.
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Cristela Alonzo learned English from watching TV as her family spoke only Spanish at home; her mother never learned to speak English.
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Cristela Alonzo would translate American shows into Spanish and act them out for her mother.
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At age 18, Cristela Alonzo left home to attend Webster University to study theater in St Louis.
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However, Cristela Alonzo dropped out because she could no longer afford school.
10.
Cristela Alonzo went back to Dallas and moved in with her sister, where she took care of her mother who was sick and her sister's children.
11.
In 2003, a year after her mother died, Cristela Alonzo got a job as an office manager at the Addison Improv and started doing stand-up.
12.
Cristela Alonzo said that she started doing stand-up as a way to process her grief and talk about her mom and her family.
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Cristela Alonzo eventually moved to Los Angeles to become a stand-up comedian.
14.
In 2006, Cristela Alonzo got her first break in Los Angeles when she was hired to write on a Comedy Central show.
15.
Cristela Alonzo spent two years traveling on a bus with the Honduran-born American comedian Carlos Mencia and several other comics.
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Cristela Alonzo then spent a lot of time on the road doing college comedy shows, where she found a lot of success.
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In 2010, Cristela Alonzo was a semi-finalist on the TV show Last Comic Standing, which raised her visibility and led to a May 2011 segment in the comedy showcase Legally Brown.
18.
Cristela Alonzo did a 30-minute segment of Comedy Central's The Half Hour on June 7,2013.
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Cristela Alonzo has appeared on Conan, Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, Gabriel Iglesias Presents Stand Up Revolution, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and Live at Gotham.
20.
Cristela Alonzo wrote the pilot with her writing partner, Kevin Hench.
21.
Cristela Alonzo was a multi-camera show, shot in front of a live audience.
22.
In 2017, Cristela Alonzo voiced the character of Cruz Ramirez in the Disney-Pixar film Cars 3.
23.
In 2019, Cristela Alonzo published a memoir called Music to My Years: A Mixtape-Memoir of Growing Up and Standing Up.
24.
In 2020, in association with Vox Media Podcast Network, Cristela Alonzo hosted and voiced the 11-episode podcast Chicano Squad, which details the story of a five-man Latino homicide investigation squad who worked to resolve police injustice in the Houston area during the 1970s.
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Cristela Alonzo is a frequent guest player on the game show 25 Words or Less.
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Cristela Alonzo has a trademark, raucous laugh: "If I'm laughing, you know I'm either very happy or very sad", she said.
27.
Cristela Alonzo supported Julian Castro for his 2020 presidential campaign.
28.
Cristela Alonzo has been outspoken as to the lack of representation of Latino candidate Castro on Saturday Night Live in their coverage of Democratic candidates.
29.
Cristela Alonzo was named one of "13 Funny Women to Watch in 2014" by Cosmopolitan.