Several cast members from the 1988 film Stand and Deliver have written the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to request that late actress Vanessa Marquez be included in the In Memoriam segment during Sunday’s Oscars.
Marquez, who played Ana in the Oscar-nominated film and had a role on early seasons of the medical drama ER, was fatally shot by a police officer in South Pasadena during a welfare check at her home on Aug. 30, 2018. Marquez was 49 when she died.
Edward James Olmos and Lou Diamond Phillips led the cast of the film, which was directed by Ramón Menéndez.
After Marquez was left out of the In Memoriam segments at the Emmy Awards in September and the SAG Awards last month, several actors from the film began petitioning the Academy to ask that she be honored with other industry insiders who passed away over the last year.
“I’ve been in contact with the Academy almost daily,” Stand and Deliver actor Patrick Baca told Deadline Wednesday night by phone. “We are resolute that they won’t forget Vanessa.”
“We are the keepers of Vanessa’s legacy,” added Stand and Deliver actor Daniel Villarreal in a statement. “It will be meaningful to have Vanessa’s image on screen at this year’s Oscars. Latinos will see themselves in her eyes and that is power.”
An online petition to include the actress in the Oscars In Memoriam segment was posted online for fans to sign, and had garnered more than 5,100 signatures as of Wednesday night.
As Deadline previously reported, attorneys representing Marquez’s mother filed a wrongful death claim against the City of South Pasadena earlier in the day.
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