Michelle Rodriguez

Michelle Rodriguez (birthname: Mayte Michelle Rodriguez) is one of the top action-oriented women screen actors in Hollywood. Her movie career was launched with rousing success, winning multiple breakthrough acting awards for her striking, intense performance in writer-director Karyn Kusama’s acclaimed debut sports drama, Girlfight (2000), in which Rodriguez starred opposite Jaime Tirelli and Paul Calderon, and premiering at the Sundance film festival where it won the grand jury prize and best director.

Rodriguez immediately was cast in a co-starring (and on-poster) role as her franchise character, Letty Ortiz, in The Fast and the Furious (2001), the first in the long-running Fast & Furious franchise directed by Rob Cohen and starring Paul Walker, Vin Diesel, Jordana Brewster, and earning a phenomenal $207.3 million on a $38 million budget. Letty became the foundational role of Rodriguez’s career, identifying her as a uniquely tough-minded, physically daring woman operating in a semi-realistic setting far apart from the superhero universe where most action-oriented female characters have been created in recent years.

The remaining Fast & Furious movies with Rodriguez included the following movies: Fast & Furious (2009), directed by Justin Lin; Fast & Furious 6 (2013), with Dwayne Johnson; Furious 7 (2015), directed by James Wan, with Djimon Hounsou, Kurt Russell, and Jason Statham; The Fate of the Furious (2017), directed by F. Gary Gray, with Charlize Theron; F9: The Fast Saga (2021), with John Cena and Helen Mirren; Fast X (2023), directed by Louis Leterrier and with Scott Eastwood, Brie Larson, and Rita Moreno; and Fast & Furious 11 (2024); the total global gross of Rodriguez’s Fast & Furious movies (through 2021) was $4.83 billion. Remarkably, Rodriguez’s next significant role also became a recurring role, in Paul W.S. Anderson’s outlandish series, Resident Evil (2002) and Resident Evil: Retribution (2012), with Milla Jovovich, earning a combined $343 million worldwide.

Michelle Rodriguez also gained an early reputation as an athletic actor in sports-themed movies, such as the surfing movie, Blue Crush (2002), based on the Outside magazine article by Susan Orlean, and starring Kate Bosworth, Matthew Davis, and Sanoe Lake, grossing $55 million worldwide. Rodriguez co-starred in another action hit, the LAPD cop drama, S.W.A.T. (2003), directed by Clark Johnson and co-starring Samuel L. Jackson, Colin Farrell, and LL Cool J, and grossing nearly triple $70 million costs with $207 million globally.

Rodriguez was part of the large ensemble of writer-director Stuart Townsend’s political thriller, Battle in Seattle (2007), co-starring André Benjamin, Woody Harrelson, Martin Henderson, Ray Liotta, Connie Nielsen, Channing Tatum, and Charlize Theron, but bombing at the box office with a gross under $1 million. Michelle Rodriguez was cast in the biggest movie of her career—to that point—by filmmaker James Cameron for Avatar (2009), co-starring Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Stephen Lang, and Sigourney Weaver, and grossing a record-breaking global number of $2.92 billion.

Rodriguez landed a plum role in another franchise, the raucous Robert Rodriguez movie, Machete (2010), starring Danny Trejo, Steven Seagal, Jeff Fahey, Cheech Marin, Lindsay Lohan, Don Johnson, Jessica Alba, and Robert De Niro, earning four times costs with a $44 million worldwide gross; Rodriguez also appeared as Luz/She in the sequel, Machete Kills (2013), with new cast members Sofia Vergara, Amber Heard, Antonio Banderas, Cuba Gooding Jr., Walton Goggins, Demián Bichir, and Mel Gibson. One of Rodriguez’s few Spanish-language movies was the Dominican Republic-produced Trópico de Sangre (2010), directed by Juan Delancer, and premiering at the New York International Latino film festival.

Another successful mega-production co-starring Rodriguez was the hit sci-fi action movie, Battle: Los Angeles (2011), co-starring Aaron Eckhart, Ramon Rodriguez, Bridget Moynahan, Ne-Yo, and Michael Peña, amassing a worldwide gross of $212 million. Rodriguez took on her first animated movie voice role with DreamWorks Animation’s Turbo (2013), with the vocal cast of Ryan Reynolds, Paul Giamatti, Michael Peña, Snoop Dogg, Maya Rudolph, Bill Hader, Luis Guzman, Richard Jenkins, Samuel L. Jackson, and Ken Jeong, earning a solid worldwide gross of $282.6 million. One of Rodriguez’s few commercial failures was her collaboration with director Walter Hill, The Assignment (2016), premiering at the Toronto film festival and earning only $389,000 box office.

Michelle Rodriguez collaborated with the father-son duo of Donald and Kiefer Sutherland for the independent Canadian drama, Milton’s Secret (2016), based on the writing of Eckhart Tolle, and premiering at the Vancouver film festival. Rodriguez’s next hit animated movie as a vocal actor was Sony Pictures Animation’s Smurfs: The Lost Village (2017), with Demi Lovato, Rainn Wilson, Joe Manganiello, Jack McBrayer, Meghan Trainor, Mandy Patinkin, and Julia Roberts, grossing a robust $197 million worldwide.

In one of her strongest dramas to date, Michelle Rodriguez was part of the impressive ensemble of filmmaker Steve McQueen’s Widows (2018), starring Viola Davis, Elizabeth Debicki, Cynthia Erivo, Colin Farrell, Brian Tyree Henry, Daniel Kaluuya, Jacki Weaver, Carrie Coon, Robert Duvall, and Liam Neeson, earning $76 million globally. One of Rodriguez’s few American arthouse indie movies was writer-director Amy Seimetz’s psychological drama, She Dies Tomorrow (2020), starring Kate Lyn Shiel, premiering at the South by Southwest film festival.

Rodriguez appeared as support in writer-producer-director Nicholas Jarecki’s crime thriller, Crisis (2021), starring Gary Oldman, Armie Hammer, Evangeline Lilly, and Greg Kinnear, earning $1.1 million. Rodriguez co-starred with Chris Pine in Paramount Pictures’ anticipated and well-reviewed reboot, Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (2023), co-directed and co-written by Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley, with Regé-Jean Page, Justice Smith, and Hugh Grant.