Gina Rodriguez didn’t just stumble into fame and fortune. The 33-year-old actress was rolling with the punches in the unforgiving entertainment business for more than a decade before landing the lead role in the hit CW series Jane the Virgin.
Still, the Chicago woman of Puerto Rican descent doesn’t forget the path she had to tread. She will never forget the long hours of study and hard work that it took to get where she is now.
The 2015 Golden Globe winner for Best Actress in a Television Series Musical or Comedy, who will now voice Mary ‘mother of Jesus’ in Sony’s animated nativity film “The Star”, appeared in an interview on HuffPost’s Build Series. She talked about balancing her personal life with her career and was subsequently surprised by the presence of one of her old acting teachers.
.@SteveYeun and @HereIsGina's characters meet in this clip from #TheStarMovie, only in theaters November 17th! 🌟 pic.twitter.com/raJp844o4g
— The Star (@TheStarMovie) November 9, 2017
Rodriguez didn’t hold back her excitement as she discovered that Rosemary Quinn, her NYU Tisch School of the Arts acting teacher, was sitting among the audience during the show. The moment turned magical as Rodriguez started to get teary eyed and thanked Quinn for providing her with the knowledge and skills needed to make it in Hollywood.
“This woman changed my life, y’all,” said the actress as her voice quivered. “Education. Rosemary Quinn is the best. You want to be an actress? Learn from that woman, because she will change your life, clearly. Thank you, Rosemary. I can never thank you enough.”
“All the dreams that I made when I was in that place [NYU], all the goals I set, I’m only now living,” the inspired actress continued. “So, here’s a testament to going after what you love.
“Because as a 33-year-old woman who wanted to be an actress before she graduated college, who said she was going to be ‘discovered’ before she graduated college, that did not happen.”
“But what else didn’t happen was I didn’t give up, I didn’t stop and I’m not going to stop because I’m nowhere near the kind of dreams that I now have created because I was able to see the other ones through.”
After the inspiring and heart-warming interview, Rodriguez made a triumphant return to her alma mater, where she crashed one of Quinn’s classes. Much to the surprise of the unsuspecting students, she posted a video to her Twitter account where we can see Rodriguez bowing to a class full of cheering students.
https://twitter.com/HereIsGina/status/927653222201876480?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.huffingtonpost.com%2Fentry%2Fgina-rodriguez-tears-up-as-she-gets-surprise-visit-from-acting-teacher_us_5a01beece4b066c2c03a2b8d
Article inspired by HuffPost // Gina Rodriguez Tears Up As She Gets A Surprise Visit From Acting Teacher