The second part of The Lincoln Lawyer season 2 is now on Netflix and includes a brief discussion about Rita Hayworth’s name that has a much longer, troubled story behind it. The television series was adapted from the Michael Connelly books, which led to a 2011 movie of the same name. Over a decade later, it was brought back with Mexican actor Manuel Garcia-Rulfo leading the cast of The Lincoln Lawyer as Mickey Haller, who had been played in the film version by Matthew McConaughey. In the original books, Haller is described as half-Mexican, and casting Garcia-Rulfo helped bring The Lincoln Lawyer back to its roots.

Netflix making sure Haller is Mexican in The Lincoln Lawyer series and featuring his family members as well allows for the portrayal and discussion of Latino culture and history. This is exemplified in The Lincoln Lawyer season 2, episode 8, where Mickey compares his mother, Elena (Mexican telenovela star Angélica María) to one of the most glamorous classic film stars, Rita Hayworth. When he questions whether his daughter knows the actress who rose to fame in the 1940s, Hayley refers to her as “a Latin movie star who changed her name,” highlighting an important part of Hayworth’s history and career.

Rita Hayworth Changed Her Name From Margarita Carmen Cansino

Before Rita Hayworth become one of the biggest names in Hollywood, she was Margarita Carmen Cansino. Hayworth was born in Brooklyn to Eduardo Carsino, who was from Spain and of Romani descent, and Volga Hayworth, an Irish/English-American. Both of her parents were dancers, and her grandfather, Antonio Cansino, had been a renowned classical Spanish dancer with a world-famous dancing school in Madrid, so it was only natural for Hayworth to enter the entertainment industry.

When she first started dancing professionally as a young girl, Hayworth emphasized her Latin roots, dying her natural brunette hair black and performing in an act called the Dancing Cansinos with her father. As a teenager, she signed a contract with Fox as Rita Cansino, playing characters of all different types of nationalities, including Argentinian, Egyptian, and Russian. However, when she started her next contract with Columbia Pictures, this all changed when she became an all-American film star, Rita Hayworth.

Why Rita Hayworth Had To Change Her Last Name In Hollywood

When Hayworth broke into mainstream Hollywood in the 1940s, it was a time of limited representation, where actors, sometimes regardless of their actual ethnicities, were either considered ethnic and exotic foreigners or all-American. For an actress like Hayworth, this meant she had to be one or the other, and with the change of her name, dying her hair blonde, and even raising her hairline, she joined the latter group and became a star best known for her beauty and glamour. Her surname had to be changed because it apparently sounded too Spanish for audiences, while her mother’s maiden name, Hayworth, evoked her white Irish ancestry.

Unfortunately, Hayworth is hardly the only Hollywood star who had to downplay her Spanish roots to find great success. Anthony Quinn, an actor who won two Academy Awards in the 1950s, was Mexican and Irish and born Manuel Antonio Rodolfo Quinn Oaxaca before adopting his stage name to appeal to American audiences. For actors like Hayworth and Quinn, this change was deemed necessary and ended up working out for their careers in the long run, though not without the costs of losing cultural identity.

Gilda, her 1946 film noir, established Hayworth as a blonde bombshell, despite the blonde being the product of hair dye. Gilda is still looked at fondly today as her most famous work, partially due to Hayworth’s film being featured in Shawshank Redemption. While the racism which forced her to change to become a star has had a long-lasting impact on Hispanic and Latino representation in film, projects like The Lincoln Lawyer help not just make a change but bring light to Hollywood’s deplorable past.

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