Rodriguez’s ascent continues with lead role in crime thriller

Back when Gina Rodriguez was a teenager, her father — a boxing referee — had a lesson for her. One day, on the way to drop her off at school, he stopped at a red light. He told her to look into the rearview mirror and say, “Today, I’m going to have a great day. I can, and I will.”

“When he first told me to say it, I was like, ‘You’re out of your mind. I’m 15. I’m not looking into the mirror and saying those words,’” Rodriguez recalled, laughing. “I said, ‘Fine, today is going to be a great day. I can and I will. OK, Dad?’

“But then he made me say it the next day and the next day,” she continued. “After a little while, it became a part of me. It was a calling of my inner self to say, ‘Wake up. You got this.’”

At this point, it seems fair to say that the actress has indeed “got this”: With the fifth season of her popular CW series, “Jane the Virgin,” continuing on March 27, Rodriguez is also starring in the new crime thriller “Miss Bala.” • “Miss Bala” is now screening in central Ohio theaters.

Based on the Oscarnominated 2011 Mexican drama of the same name and directed by Catherine Hardwicke, best known for “Twilight” (2008), “Miss Bala” casts Rodriguez as Gloria, a young makeup artist from Los Angeles who is drawn into a dangerous world of cross-border crime while visiting a friend in Tijuana, Mexico. After her friend disappears, Gloria is kidnapped and forced to smuggle laundered money for a drug cartel. As her situation deteriorates, she has to draw upon reserves of cunning, inventiveness and strength that she never knew she had.

“It’s a really fun action thriller that’s all about female empowerment,” the 34-year-old Rodriguez said during an interview at a Las Vegas hotel. “My character goes down to Mexico to visit a good friend of hers and winds up having to use her wits to survive. You’re watching a girl go from ordinary to extraordinary.”

In a separate interview, Hardwicke said that an action film starring Rodriguez was a good next step for the world of cinema.

“The time is right for this movie,” Hardwicke said. “It’s an action movie where a Latina actress is No. 1 on the call sheet. When that actress is Gina Rodriguez, you can’t go wrong, because she has the heart and the smarts.”

The new film is a tribute to Gerardo Naranjo’s 2011 original, Rodriguez said, not a replacement for it.

“This is a love letter to the original ‘Miss Bala,’ which was an incredible film,” she said. “It was so well written, incredibly shot and done well. Ours is from the perspective of an American Latino, which is a different lens and different experience.

“The original film is fantastic and doesn’t need to be touched. What we did was an action film inspired by ‘Miss Bala.’”

As for the first word in “action film,” no problem for Rodriguez.

“I started out boxing for fun when I was really young,” she said, “and I was always that person who craved adrenaline. I love the rush, which is why I asked to do my own stunts. Ever try climbing out of a bathroom window and scaling down a wall in heels? Now, that’s badass”

As a young girl growing up on Chicago’s Northwest Side, Gina Alexis Rodriguez — the youngest of three sisters — was a natural performer. She was dancing with a Windy City salsa company at 7, and in high school was a regular in school plays. At 16, she was accepted into the Columbia University Theatrical Collaboration, a summer program at the New York college. The Big Apple agreed with her, and she attended New York University, graduating with a theater degree from the university’s Tisch School of the Arts.

She made her screen debut in an episode of “Law & Order” (2004) and went on to guest-star on many television programs, as well as win a recurring role on “The Bold and the Beautiful” (2011-12) and, of course, star on “Jane the Virgin.” Her films include “Our Family Wedding” (2010), “Go for It!” (2011), “Filly Brown”

(2012), “Interstate” (2013), “Sleeping with the Fishes” (2013), “Deepwater Horizon” (2016) and “Annihilation” (2018).

Next up is “Someone Great,” a romantic comedy about a woman who suffers a devastating breakup and decides to have an adventure in New York with her best friends before moving across the country.

Many of her roles are not Latina-specific, which Rodriguez

appreciates, but she would like to tell more Latino stories.

“Latinos make one out of every four tickets sold at the multiplex,” she said. “They are among the highest population of moviegoers. We need to hear our stories. We want movies to reflect our