Gina Rodriguez, star of Jane the Virgin, the second best Monday night show on the CW Network – sorry, but Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is the bomb – has seen her career explode since the show began its successful run in 2014. The 31-year-old actress won the Golden Globe for Best Actress – Television Series Musical or Comedy for the series last year and will receive the Female Star of Tomorrow Award at the CinemaCon Big Screen Achievement Awards on April 14.

Riding on the wave of success of the show, Gina has recently landed some plum film roles, including the drama Deepwater Horizon co-starring Mark Wahlberg and Kate Hudson. She will also join Natalie Portman and Oscar Isaac in the follow-up to the acclaimed sci-fi flick, Ex Machina, called Annihilation. Like many aspiring actors, Gina had her share of struggles. She recently talked to USA Today about taking a leap of faith after her role in the 2011 independent film Go For It!. She packed up and moved from New York to California and it doesn’t sound like it was a fun-filled road trip at all:

On her rough road trip from NY to LA
“My boyfriend at the time was African-American, he was from Texas so we’d always visit his family and we’d always get stopped because we were an interracial couple or we’d get totally racially profiled, like getting pulled over by cops. We decided not to take the southern route to L.A because we didn’t want to deal with racism, pretty much. So, we took the northern route. In January. And it was icy and terrifying and it took us a really long time because the snow was so bad and we had to stop so often. It took seven days to get across country to an empty apartment with no bed — slept on the floor.”

“But we made it. And I think that was such a metaphor for my life as an actor because it just wasn’t easy and it still isn’t easy and it gets icy and it gets dangerous and it gets racist but we prevailed. And that’s kind of what the whole experience felt like and always will feel like and always will remind me how strong we were in that somewhat dangerous time.”

On her #MovementMondays posts celebrating actors of color
“[Fans] look up and they’re like, ‘Oh my God, she’s just like me. Oh my God, that actor is from where I grew up. Actors of color are much more present than we were 20 years ago, but what I felt like is that we were nowhere. I couldn’t see us. I couldn’t find us on TV. I couldn’t find us in the movies and it made me feel like I wasn’t enough.  It made me feel like my story wasn’t good enough, that I wasn’t human enough. It made me feel like I didn’t deserve to tell these stories.”

[From USA Today]

It really sucks that racism like this continues to exist, but I am glad that actors like Gina are talking about it. Gina has already proven to be an advocate for body positivity, and her #MovementMonday social media campaign has done a lot to put actors of a wide range of often overlooked cultural backgrounds in the spotlight. In fact, the subject of her last #MovementMonday post is Mr. Robot‘s Rami Malek, whose parents are Egyptian and Greek American. And he’s not too hard on the eyes either. Although the campaign has helped increase the visibility of these actors, Gina realizes there is still a long way to go.

Photo credit: WENN.com, Fame Flynet