Michelle Rodriguez has spoken out about how her strict Jehovah’s Witness upbringing made Hollywood feel like the “devil’s world” when she first broke into the industry.
The actress, 48, made the revelation during a 25th anniversary screening of The Fast and the Furious in Los Angeles, where she reflected on her mindset as a 20-year-old newcomer cast as Letty Ortiz in the 2001 original. “I came from a Jehovah’s Witness background at the time,” she said at the event. “So it’s like none of this really means anything to me. And so you’re dealing with a kid who’s not affected.”
“I’m already playing in the so-called devil’s world in my mind as a 20-year-old, obviously.”
Rather than being seduced by fame or glamour, Rodriguez said what genuinely excited her about the role was the chance to do things her upbringing had strictly forbidden. “I really loved being able to get in a car, train, learn how to shoot guns, learn how to race cars,” she said. “To me, that was the exciting thing. Doing things that you weren’t allowed to do in real life. Break windows, be violent, all that stuff.”
Rodriguez has spoken before about how restrictive her childhood was. On Facebook Watch’s Red Table Talk in 2020, she explained that even ordinary milestones were treated as taboo within her family’s faith. “I mean, birthdays and celebrating Halloween are like evil,” she said. “I didn’t get to watch Disney movies ’til I was in my teens because of all the witchcraft.”
In a 2015 interview with Interview magazine, she went further, describing the religion as something that had “kind of scarred me for life.”
Before her breakout role, Rodriguez had only appeared in two independent films, Girlfight and 3 A.M. She’s said Vin Diesel was behind the opportunity after watching her performance in Girlfight and pushing for her to join the cast as his character’s love interest. The role would launch her into one of Hollywood’s longest-running blockbuster franchises, with eight Fast and Furious films to date.
Away from her home life, Rodriguez has said she was a completely different person at school, one who didn’t fit the image expected of her at home. “At school, I was this tomboy kid who just loved to hang out with her friends and learn curse words, trying to fit in with the cool kids and defending all the kids who got picked on,” she said.
That contrast became especially stark when she was made to preach door-to-door as part of her family’s religious practice, occasionally running into people she recognised. “Sometimes I’d knock on the door of somebody I was going to school with, so it was like living a double life,” she admitted.
Rodriguez’s defiance of Hollywood conventions extended beyond her personal background. She famously fought to reshape her character in the original Fast and Furious script, refusing to play Letty as a trophy girlfriend. “It was a reality check for them to realize that the streets don’t work like that,” she said in 2021. “You don’t just get with a guy because he’s hot. There’s a hierarchy there.”
She threatened to quit rather than play the original version of the character. “I basically cried and said, ‘I’m going to quit’ and, ‘Don’t sue me, please — I’m sorry, but I can’t do this in front of millions of people,'” she said. The script was reworked, with writers Gary Scott Thompson and David Ayer taking her recommendations into account.
In the viral moment that launched her career, Rodriguez’s raw authenticity in Girlfight had caught Diesel’s attention and set the stage for her Hollywood breakthrough. That 2000 indie film, in which she played a troubled teen who finds purpose in boxing, earned her critical acclaim and multiple awards. She nearly didn’t attend the audition, having spent two years doing extra work while watching formally trained friends get rejected repeatedly. “Two days before going on that Girlfight audition, which was my first real audition, I decided I didn’t want to do it anymore,” she recalled in her 2015 Interview magazine conversation with Milla Jovovich. “I was like, ‘F–k this shit, what do these people know?”
Rodriguez has maintained her outspoken approach throughout her career, at times threatening to leave the franchise over its treatment of female characters. Following The Fate of the Furious, she publicly stated she would not commit to more films without better representation for the women in the cast, a demand that led to a female writer being brought on board for F9.
The Fast and Furious franchise is currently gearing up for Fast X: Part Two, which Diesel has indicated will serve as the final chapter of the main series.