I had dreams, but always told myself, 'Nah, that would never happen.' For a poor Latina, (acting) wasn't a reality.

I feel like there's this misconception that immigrants come here and just don't care about the system and paying taxes, and that's not true. My father was desperately trying to be a legal contributor to this society.

My parents' deportation gave me so much strength to keep on moving forward, because any type of failure - whether in school or with jobs or rejection from a casting office - nothing could be as bad as what I had already gone through. Nothing could be worse than coming home expecting to see your loving parents and them not being there.

No one checked to see if I had a place to live or food to eat, and at 14, I found myself basically on my own.

After a while, you're growing up so quickly and you begin to not know your parents anymore. You're left with the memories you had as a kid, but you're not a kid anymore and your experiences are separate. We are now much closer and communicate almost every day. It's a lot of work, but what holds us together is the hope that we will one day be together again.

I feel like you can't really be truthful as an artist and empathize with the human experience, unless you know your truth and you're not living a lie. So I'm learning through it, and it's making me a better person, and it's making me a better artist, I think.

I had dreams, but always told myself, 'Nah, that would never happen.' For a poor Latina, (acting) wasn't a reality.