Gina Rodriguez

Gina Alexis Rodriguez (born July 30, 1984) is an American actress.

Rodriguez was born on July 30, 1984 in Chicago, Illinois, the youngest daughter of Puerto Rican parents, Magali and Gino Rodriguez.

Her father was a boxing referee.

She has an older brother and two sisters.

She was raised in the Belmont Cragin neighborhood on Chicago's Northwest Side.

At the age of seven, Rodriguez performed at the salsa dance company Fantasia Juvenil.

Rodriguez was raised Catholic, and went to high school at St. Ignatius College Prep where she was two years behind the comedian John Mulaney.

She has stated that she did not attend "Jake McNamara's party" which is the subject of one of Mulaney's bits.

She focused on salsa dancing until age 17 when she began acting more.

At the age of 16, she was among thirteen teenagers to be accepted into Columbia University's Theatrical Collaboration.

She attended NYU's Tisch School of the Arts.

Born and raised in Chicago, Rodriguez began her career in 2003 in theater productions and made her screen debut in an episode of the police procedural drama series Law & Order.

Rodriguez made her screen debut appearing in an episode of Law & Order in 2004.

She later has appeared on Eleventh Hour, Army Wives and The Mentalist.

She trained for four years at the Atlantic Theater Company and Experimental Theatre Wing, and earned with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 2005.

She portrayed Frida Kahlo in the world premiere of Casa Blue in the UK, in the play called The Last Moments in the Life of Frida Kahlo at the American Stage Theatre.

On October 19, 2011, Rodriguez landed the recurring role, Beverly, in the soap opera series The Bold and the Beautiful.

She received a role in the musical film Go for It!, for which she received a 2011 Imagen Awards nomination.

Her breakthrough came in 2012, in the independent musical-drama film Filly Brown.

In 2012, Rodriguez played young hip-hop artist Majo Tenorio in the independent musical-drama film Filly Brown, for which she won an Imaged Award.

She received good reviews for her performance in film.

She also was the recipient of the Best Actor Award at the First Run Film Festival in New York.

On June 9, 2013, Gina won the Inaugural Lupe Award.

On April 16, 2013, during an interview, she revealed she was offered a role in the Lifetime television series Devious Maids, but turned it down.

On October 16, 2013, she joined the cast of the film Sleeping With The Fishes.

She is known for her leading role as Jane Villanueva in The CW satirical romantic dramedy series Jane the Virgin (2014–2019), for which she received a Golden Globe Award in 2015.

On February 27, 2014, Entertainment Weekly announced that Rodriguez would play the titular role of Jane Villanueva in Jane the Virgin, for which she went on to win a Golden Globe Award.

On June 4, 2014, Rodriguez joined the cast of the drama film Sticky Notes.

In August 2015, she co-hosted the 2015 Teen Choice Awards with Ludacris and Josh Peck.

She has gone on to star in such films as Deepwater Horizon (2016), Ferdinand (2017), Annihilation (2018), Miss Bala (2019), Someone Great (2019), Scoob! (2020), Awake (2021), I Want You Back (2022), and Spy Kids: Armageddon (2023).

She voiced Mary in the animated film The Star, which was released in November 2017, as well as Una in Blue Sky Studios' Ferdinand a month later and played Anya in the science fiction thriller film Annihilation, opposite Natalie Portman.

In March 2018, Netflix announced that they had acquired the live-action film rights for Carmen Sandiego and that Rodriguez would star as Sandiego in the film.

Rodriguez owns the production company I Can & I Will Productions.

She worked on projects at CBS and The CW centered around the Latino community.

She voiced the titular character of the Netflix animated action-adventure series Carmen Sandiego (2019–21) and starred and executive produced the Disney+ comedy-drama series Diary of a Future President (2020–21).

In 2023, Rodriguez began starring in and executive producing the ABC comedy series, Not Dead Yet.

She also voices Carmen Sandiego in the Netflix animated series Carmen Sandiego which premiered on January 18, 2019.

She served as a producer and starred in the 2019 Netflix romantic comedy film Someone Great, where her character sang and danced to Lizzo's Truth Hurts, ultimately popularizing the song further and hit number one on the Billboard Hot 100.

In 2019, Rodriguez starred as the title character in the action thriller film Miss Bala.

In the same year, it was announced that Rodriguez was cast in the upcoming Netflix science fiction thriller Awake.