Cover Girl: America Ferrera on W Magazine

Twenty-three year old Ugly Betty star America Ferrera hits the cover of the newest issue of W magazine.

A few excerpts from the recent interview:

"Happiness is something that you have to decide to have in your life," she says. "No amount of accolades can make you a happy person, and learning that as young as I did was a gift."

She's planning on shooting a movie during her summer hiatus. "When there's a film I want to do, sleep doesn't matter," she says. "Part of me would love to be sitting in the sun in Italy, but I'd be crazy by day four... When it comes to envisioning an actor in a role that they haven't seen them in, people in this business can be a little uncreative," she says. "No one is willing to take a gamble." In light of this, she's been proactive in her career: "It's been more about developing my own material, finding roles that I would like to play and figuring out a way to get those things made."

"The hardest part of this year has been learning to enjoy it," she says. "It's almost like a full-time job reminding myself to live in the moment and not look for more, more, more"—her recent success has only made her more likely to think big: "I see now that people who make movies, this world of creative geniuses that I grew up idolizing, are just normal people who wanted to do something and made it happen. Everything that's happened to me in the last year has only made me feel more like a normal person, more human, but in the most beautiful way."