Mayte Michelle Rodriguez was born on July 12, 1978 in Bexar County, Texas. With Puerto Rican and Dominican parents, Michelle had quite the diverse upbringing. Around the age of nine, she moved with her family to the Dominican Republic where she says she learned Spanish and consequently "forgot every word of English" she knew. Her family also spent time in Puerto Rico until finally moving to New Jersey where Michelle would spend the majority of her young adulthood. During her adolescence, Michelle was raised as a Jehovah's Witness, a religious background which she eventually grew apart from. While her mother enforced a strict and proper upbringing, her father challenged Michelle to learn from the "school of life", a dichotomy which she says "created what you see in front of you".
             Michelle first developed her "tough girl" persona due to the often rough environments in which she grew up. Michelle refers to herself as "the joker" in school, something which likely contributed to the five schools she was kicked out of growing up. Feeling she "wasn't really being educated" she dropped out of High School and later obtained her G.E.D. before briefly attending business school. Realizing that she could not spend her life being "sun deprived and stuck in an office", she quit school and set her sights on becoming a writer and director, and decided acting could be the outlet to get her there. After doing extra work for two years with little success and even less money, Michelle finally spotted an ad in Backstage Magazine for a 'young latina' boxing role. Young and inexperienced, she showed up to the audition on her own terms: on roller-blades, late, and unprepared. The Girlfight casting directors saw something unique in Michelle and her attitude (even perceiving her as a 'young female Marlon Brando'-type), resulting in Michelle beating out more than 350 others for the part. The 2000 role garnered Michelle numerous awards and nominations and much critical acclaim. This success launched Michelle as a young star quickly on the rise in Hollywood.
              Still going strong off the success of her independent film debut, Michelle appeared opposite Danny Glover in Showtime's made-for-tv drama 3 A.M. followed in 2001 with the adrenaline-charged mega-hit The Fast and the Furious opposite Vin Diesel. An avid gamer who has since lent her voice to various popular games including True Crime: Streets of LA, Driver3, and Halo 2, Michelle then jumped at the opportunity to play a role in her next film, Resident Evil, an adaptation of the hit video game series. With these films under her belt, Michelle began to seal herself as the go-to "tough girl" in Hollywood, combining her physically strong believability with a natural beauty and unforced sex-appeal. She then took to Hawaii for the first time to play in the summer surfing flick Blue Crush in 2002. In 2003, Michelle played a police officer opposite Samuel L. Jackson and Colin Farrell in the blockbuster S.W.A.T. In 2005, a new chapter of her career would begin when she took a starring role in ABC's hit television series Lost playing haunted and hardened ex-cop "Ana Lucia", revealed during the show's second season after making a brief appearance at the end of the first. During her time on Lost, Michelle overcame legal woes as a result of a DUI arrest. Having paid her dues and ended her run on the series, she is currently hard at work on many new projects. Her latest film Battle in Seattle, costarring Charlize Theron, hits theaters in September and she recently wrapped filming on James Cameron's $200 million sci-fi epic Avatar, due out in December 2009 and the 4th installment of the The Fast and the Furious franchise entitled simply Fast and Furious hitting theaters next summer. Michelle is now gearing up to star in and co-produce her first film, a drama which tells the tale of the Dominican Republic's historic Mirabal sisters, with her production company Cheshire Kat, entitled Trópico de Sangre.
              Having overcome a somewhat troubled and highly diverse childhood and various legal issues, Michelle is now charging forward and her future is as bright as ever. Fed up with typecasting and stereotypes and what she calls the "cage of frightened sharks" in Hollywood, Michelle is taking her future into her own hands, and doing it once again on her own terms. With her gutsy, no-nonsense, yet down to earth persona, Michelle is truly a force to be reckoned with.

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