America Ferrara is shown Jan. 11 at the Golden Globes ceremony. Her series, Ugly Betty, will end in April after four seasons. America Ferrara is shown Jan. 11 at the Golden Globes ceremony. Her series, Ugly Betty, will end in April after four seasons. (Chris Pizzello/Associated Press)

Television comedy Ugly Betty will get the axe from U.S. network ABC after four seasons.

The show starring America Ferrera began as a critical success, but ratings fell in its third and fourth seasons. ABC said the show will conclude its run in April.

"We've mutually come to the difficult decision to make this Ugly Betty's final season," executive producer Silvio Horta and ABC president Steve McPherson said in a joint statement. "We are announcing now as we want to allow the show ample time to write a satisfying conclusion."

Based on Colombian telenovela Yo Soy Betty, La Fea, the show was adapted for the U.S. market by actress and producer Salma Hayek. In Canada, it aired in English on Citytv and in French on Radio-Canada.

Ferrera won a Golden Globe and an Emmy for her performance as the fashion leper Betty, the lone nice person at a New York style magazine.

Ferrera, now 25, was at the Sundance Film Festival Thursday with the Iraq war homecoming drama The Dry Land, written and directed by her boyfriend, Ryan Piers Williams.

She plays a troubled wife dealing with the violent mood swings of her soldier husband, played by Ryan O'Nan in the film, Williams's directorial debut.

"She pushed me so hard to just make the script better and better and better and to just never settle for anything less than the vision I was setting out to make," Williams said Thursday in Park City, Utah.

Ferrara first came to Sundance in 2002 with Real Women Have Curves, about a Mexican-American teen battling her parents' traditional working-class values, which won an audience award at the independent film festival.

She said that role was a breakthrough for her, as Hollywood usually reserves the lead roles for wafer-thin blondes.

"What's so kind of beautiful about the whole thing was that everything that made me not right for all of those hundreds of commercial auditions that I went on and no one ever wanted me for is what made me perfectly right for Real Women Have Curves," she said.

The actress also has upcoming roles in Our Family Wedding and the animated film How to Train Your Dragon.

With files from The Associated Press