Interview met Michelle Rodriguez

She’s been labeled insane, tough, controversial and bisexual. All of these things Michelle Rodriguez can neither confirm nor deny. But Latina’s May cover star does talk openly about her hard partying past, the stereotypes she battles in Hollywood, and what she finds attractive in a mate. Read on for some of Rodriguez’s choice quotes, and pickup the new issue of Latina, on newsstands April 22nd.

On racking up $250,000 in legal fees and serving 18 days in L.A.’s Lynwood Jail:
“It was important for me to get all of that stuff out of the way before I hit 30. It was a bunch of reality checks all at once, like, ‘Wake up, kid, time to get to work.’ Now I feel like I’m being born again.”

On Being Misunderstood:
“I knock on wood that the media will understand me. But if I only saw one percent of my life, I would think the same thing everybody else thinks. So when they don’t get it, I don’t feel lost. My whole thing is, I’m waiting for them to catch up.”

On the Idea of Marriage:
“I don’t believe in commitment. That’s like giving somebody the responsibility of your happiness, like, ‘Here, you make sure that all my orgasms are great, that I have somebody to hold on cold winter nights, and just assure me that if anybody messes with me, you’ll beat them up.’ Other than that, I don’t see the point of marriage. But when I need my love, I get my love.”

On What Attracts Her:
“Hugh Jackman,” she says, stipulating that she likes her men over 35 and with the right mix of brains and brawn. “I can’t stand boys. A boy looks at me like he wants to bang me, and I wanna throw up. I like men, ’cause they’ve been around the block and they respect their mamis. It’s hard to find one that’s not machista.”

On Her Parents:
“My father loved women,” she says of dad Rafael, who died in 1997 of liver failure due to alcoholism. “And my mom, like a smart Dominican woman, used to smell his underwear when he came home to make sure he hadn’t been with someone else.”

On Not Following the Rules in Hollywood:
“If I had done what the powers that be in Hollywood told me to do—‘Do a hot action movie playing the half-naked girlfriend, then do a Maxim cover [which Rodriguez has turned down in the past] and then start a music career to make yourself even hotter’— I’d be making $10 million per movie by now. If I would’ve followed that formula, kissing all the asses along the way, then I’d be there right now. But I wouldn’t be happy because I wouldn’t be living my truth.”

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