Gina Rodriguez

Gina Alexis Rodriguez (born July 30, 1984) is an American actress. 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. 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. Her breakthrough came in 2012, in the independent musical-drama film Filly Brown. She has gone on to star in such films as Deepwater Horizon (2016), Ferdinand (2017), Annihilation (2018), Miss Bala (2019), Someone Great (2019) and Scoob! (2020). She also voiced the titular character of the Netflix animated action-adventure series Carmen Sandiego. Gina Alexis Rodriguez was born in Chicago, Illinois, the youngest daughter of Puerto Rican parents, Magali and Gino Rodriguez, a boxing referee. She has two sisters and an older brother. 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. 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 United Kingdom, in the play called The Last Moments in the Life of Frida Kahlo at the American Stage Theatre.