What's so kind of beautiful about the whole thing was that everything that made me not right for all of those hundreds of commercial auditions that I went on and no one ever wanted me for is what made me perfectly right for 'Real Women Have Curves'.

To me, the tragedy about this whole image-obsessed society is that young girls get so caught up in just achieving that they forget to realize that they have so much more to offer the world.

Latino actors and actresses have had to struggle for decades, but when I came around with Real Women Have Curves, attitudes were starting to change. We screened the film all over the world - in Jewish communities, black communities, Greek communities, German communities - and people across the board said, "That's my family."

The first time I landed in New York and got a cab to my hotel, I was completely struck by it: a feeling of life and chaos, 24 hours around the clock, just like in London. And whatever your problem is, it's insignificant. You're just a small part of something very big.

Once I started drinking more water, my skin, hair and nails all flourished.

Relationships take time and energy, and your job kind of sucks that all out of you. It takes an extra effort to stay present in a relationship when you are working so many hours.

I realized how Latina I was, and then also, at the same time, how not Latina enough I was, because I’m born and raised in Los Angeles. I speak Spanish, but I don’t speak perfect Spanish, not like a native speaker