Finding love on set, turning down roles, receiving a diagnosis, becoming a producer.
There is so much about Gina Rodriguez many don't know.
Keep watching to find out all the details!
Gina Rodriguez is the youngest of three daughters born to Puerto Rican parents.
The family lived in a basement apartment in Chicago where the sisters wrapped themselves
in sheets when they went to bed at night in order to keep rodents away.
While the girls slept, their father Gino would whisper in their ears,
"I can and I will."
This mantra paid off, as all three girls would go on to become successful women.
Gina's oldest sister Ivelisse earned an MBA from Harvard Business School and became a
partner in a private credit and equity fund.
Meanwhile, middle sister Rebecca is a medical director.
As Gina told Time Magazine in 2015,
"We lived the idea of the American Dream."
Gina Rodriguez worked hard to get to where she is today, and she credits her education
at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts for her success.
At the 2018 Women's March, she proudly held up a sign that read, "I'm the educated Latina
you've been warned about."
Although Rodriguez's parents didn't go to college, they valued education and made it
a priority for their children.
Gina's oldest sister Ivelisse was the first in the family to attend college, and she helped
her younger sister pay for NYU.
Alas, her tuition wasn't quite paid in full, and it took her a while to pay it off.
She graduated in 2006, but it wasn't until 2016 that her debt was fully squared away.
"I would never change it for the world, but yes, it took me way too long."
Gina Rodriguez spent about a decade as a struggling actor, but that all changed in 2014 with the
premiere of the romantic CW dramedy Jane the Virgin.
As she told Backstage in 2015,
"[Jane the Virgin is] the job I was praying for, waiting for."
The show's creator, Jennie Snyder Urman, talked with The TV Addict about the audition process,
as she revealed,
"I knew automatically!
[...] Gina was the third person who came in and she really just gave the performance in
the audition that she does in the pilot.
There was nothing to change, it was amazing."
"Hi, hello, this is Jane Villanueva.
I need to talk to Dr. Alver, because I have a crazy doctor telling me that I'm pregnant."
Although Rodriguez booked the role, it wasn't all smooth sailing at the time, as behind
the scenes, she had to endure some serious embarrassment.
As she revealed to Us Weekly,
"The year I booked Jane, I ripped my pencil skirt down the back in the audition, no panties.
It was awful."
Rodriguez's lead performance on Jane the Virgin ended up making such an immediate impression
on audiences that in January 2015, she won a Golden Globe for Best Actress in a TV Series,
Musical or Comedy.
She beat out such notable names as Julia Louis-Dreyfus , Edie Falco, Lena Dunham, and Taylor Schilling.
Rodriguez was praised for her speech at the ceremony, which made headlines for its inspirational
message.
She thanked her parents for encouraging her dreams and her sisters for being her "biggest
role models".
She also declared,
"This award is so much more than myself.
It represents a culture that wants to see themselves as heroes."
On the night that she won, Rodriguez brought her family along with her to the ceremony
as well as the InStyle afterparty.
During the star-studded affair, her sisters reportedly spent their time looking to snap
a selfie with Channing Tatum, and honestly, can you really blame them?
In addition to catapulting her career, Jane the Virgin also transformed Gina Rodriguez's
personal life.
In particular, it was how she met her husband, Joe LoCicero.
As fate would have it, in 2016, LoCicero guest-starred on the series, playing a stripper who due
to a bit of a mix-up showed up at Jane's class instead of her bachelorette party.
In addition to catching the eye of his future bride, LoCicero must have charmed production
as well, as he went on to appear in four more episodes of the show as various characters.
In a 2018 interview with AP News, Rodriguez gushed about her partner-in-crime, as she
revealed,
"I did always pray that I would meet a really cool partner [...] that I was going to have
somebody that was going to uplift me and support me […] and I found it in Joe, and I found
it on the set of Jane."
Two years after that initial meet-cute, Rodriguez confirmed that she was engaged via an Instagram
photo of LoCicero and her hand donning a sparkler.
And as she planned her own real-life nuptials, her TV character's wedding was also being
arranged.
As life imitated art, Rodriguez had to make one major promise to her fiance.
As she admitted to Access Hollywood,
"My husband made me promise that I wouldn't waste all my tears on Jane's wedding, and
I had to cry at our wedding also."
Gina Rodriguez has said that she didn't see many actors who looked like her on TV while
growing up.
As she told The Washington Post in 2015,
"That lack of visibility, that lack of relatability, really made me feel kind of alone in this
world.
It really made me feel a certain way about myself, about beauty, what I could and could
not be."
But there was one star who made such a big impression on Rodriguez that it changed the
course of her life.
When Vogue asked her in a 2017 video when she was confident that she wanted to become
an actor, she responded,
"When I saw America Ferrera in Real Women Have Curves."
In thath 2002 film, Ferrera played a first generation Mexican-American teenager who breaks
away from societal standards and familial pressure to go away to college.
And in a weird twist of fate, now that Rodriguez and Ferrera are both famous, they've been
confused for each other.
In 2015, the Golden Globes' official Twitter account even identified Ferrera as Rodriguez
while the former was announcing the nominations.
Ferrera later told Entertainment Weekly,
"It's fun to be able to say, 'Nope, sorry, not her!' and I keep walking."
It seems like these two have ultimately embraced their similarities, as evidenced by the time
they campaigned together to support Nevada politician Jacky Rosen.
Although Gina Rodriguez has worked hard to make a name for herself in Hollywood, that
doesn't mean she would just accept any old role that came her way.
Case in point: the time when she was offered a lead part in Devious Maids, a comedy-drama
about Latina housemaids working for wealthy families in Beverly Hills.
But she turned it down, because it didn't align with what she wanted her acting journey
to look like, as she didn't want to feed into a stereotype.
As she explained to The Sydney Morning Herald in 2014,
"I wasn't going to let my introduction to the world be one of a story that I think has
been told many times.
I wanted it to be a story that was going to liberate young girls and say, we're there
too, we're the doctors, the teachers, the writer, the lawyers, and I can do that too."
As the saying goes, the best things in life are worth waiting for.
And it's a good thing that Rodriguez held out for a part that truly spoke to her purpose,
because if she had taken the Devious Maids gig, she likely would've never found Jane
the Virgin, which premiered only one year later.
Way before she was dazzling us on our TV screens, Gina Rodriguez was cutting up the dance floor.
She began salsa dancing professionally way back when she was just 7 years old and continued
for 10 years.
As she revealed to the Chicago Tribune in 2018,
"I danced in Humboldt Park, and danced in every Puerto Rican parade."
Rodriguez was later able to put her dance skills to good use on Jane the Virgin.
Dancing with the Stars veteran Derek Hough once guest-starred on the show and then posted
a clip on Facebook of the two of them salsa dancing on set, and let's just say, they both
knew what they were doing.
Rodriguez also showcased her dancing for a good cause on a 2017 episode of The Ellen
DeGeneres Show, as she gave the show's producer a salsa lesson, which raised $10,000 for hurricane
relief in Puerto Rico.
Another talk show host that Rodriguez impressed with her dance skills was James Corden.
During a 2016 appearance on The Late Late Show, she spoke about the possibility of one
day releasing an album, which would also potentially include some video displaying her skills.
"It'd be like my Lemonade, but it would be salsa dancing."
In addition to all her acting credits, Gina Rodriguez spends a significant amount of time
working behind the camera as well.
She launched the company I Can & I Will Productions, with the name paying homage to her dad's nightly
mantra.
According to the company's Instagram page,
"[I Can & I Will Productions] is dedicated to creating artistic content for underrepresented
voices in front of and behind the camera."
The projects that Rodriguez has spearheaded include ones she's starred in, such as the
2019 rom-com Someone Great.
I Can & I Will is also behind Netflix's Carmen Sandiego, which Rodriguez felt especially
connected to, as she was a huge fan of the 90s series that it's based on and which starred
an idol of hers, Rita Moreno.
And in 2020, the actress-turned-producer was at the helm of Diary of a Future President,
a comedy-drama series centered around a Cuban American middle schooler who aspires to be
president.
Rodriguez played the main character in flash-forward scenes and also directed and executive produced
the series, which ran for two seasons on Disney+.
As she explained to Access Hollywood,
"I always had the goal to create content that would help change the landscape of our culture."
"I always had the desire and the draw towards the next generation."
In addition to her acting and production work, Rodriguez is also behind a nonprofit company.
The charitable organization is called the We Will foundation, and its mission is to
give arts education and scholarship money to, in particular, young women who are less
fortunate.
For this work, Rodriguez was honored with the Young Humanitarian Award at the 2016 Unite4:Humanity
gala.
Rodriguez also joined the feminine care brand Always in its #EndPeriodPoverty campaign.
The company partnered with Feeding America to provide personal care products to help
young women who experience period poverty.
In an op-ed that Rodriguez wrote for Teen Vogue in 2018, she explained why it's so important
for girls to have access to the proper products during their menstrual cycle.
As she put it,
"Nearly one in five U.S. girls have left school early, or missed entirely, because they don't
have access to the products they need to manage their periods [...] I want to help make sure
that fewer girls miss important time in class."
When she was 26, Rodriguez was diagnosed with Hashimoto's disease, which is a chronic autoimmune
condition that affects the thyroid gland.
It's treatable, though it has no cure, and its symptoms include fatigue, joint pain,
and memory issues.
In the beginning stages of her diagnosis, Rodriguez attempted to ignore it, as she did
things like neglecting to take her medicine on time, eating foods that she knew weren't
going to make her feel good, and avoiding exercise.
But then she realized that she needed to change her coping mechanisms.
As she told Self Magazine in 2018,
"[Hashimoto's] affects so many aspects of your life.
I've had it for so many years... that rebellion of not taking care of myself can't exist anymore."
Rodriguez eventually started exercising for her health, rather than just to lose weight.
In 2017, she trained in the art of Muay Thai when she went to Thailand for a month with
her then-boyfriend, now-husband Joe LoCicero.
As she explained to Shape Magazine,
"Doing Muay Thai taught me so much about my body.
Now I view it as an engine that keeps me active and healthy."
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