Acclaimed for her performance ... Gina Rodriguez landed her first major role in Jane The Virgin. Source: Supplied

The 29-year-old Rodriguez’s face is plastered on billboards across Los Angeles and The Hollywood Reporter has dubbed her ‘The Next Big Thing’.

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But just one year ago, the Latino actor was facing a career and life crisis.

On Christmas Eve she got the news her big break, a starring role in navy drama Wild Blue, had fallen through.

Rodriguez was devastated. While she’s notched up plenty of guest roles over the years — Happy Endings, The Mentalist, Bold and the Beautiful — money was tight. She was living “cheque to cheque”, working “17 odd jobs” and squeezing in auditions between telemarketing, waitressing and babysitting her sister’s kids.

“There were some things happening in my life where I was like: ‘Wow, it’s raining’,” she says. “I cannot wait to see the rainbow because this is a heavy pour.”

Jane the Virgin ... Gina Rodriguez (left) as Jane and Andrea Navedo as Xiomara in the pilot. Source: Foxtel

But in one of those rags-to-riches tales Hollywood loves, the sun came out again just a few weeks later, when a producer who’d seen her playing a rapper in Sundance flick Filly Brown, offered her an audition for Jane the Virgin.

To be honest, the project sounded a little strange. A frothy American take on a Venezuelan telenovela (an over the top style of South American soap) about a mix up at a hospital that sees a 23-year-old virgin artificially inseminated?

“I was like: Jane the Virgin? That is quite the title,” the actor says of reading Jennie Snyder’s script. “And then 10 pages in I was like: ‘Did she grow up with me? Why does she know my life?’ Besides the virgin (thing) and the artificial insemination ...”

For her part, showrunner Snyder was almost more delighted than Rodriguez.

“It was like meeting ‘The One’,” she says.

“I was more sure about her than when I met my husband.”

The outlandish premise is just the launching pad for numerous fun and juicy storylines: biological donor Rafael is a married man who not only owns the hotel where Jane works, but was her former teenage crush. Jane’s father’s identity, kept secret by her mother, is revealed to be famed telenovela star Rogelio de la Vega, played by real life telenovela star Jaime Camil. The show is played more as a warm dramedy than a flat out soap and, despite her virginity, Jane’s no prude.

Golden Gobes nominated ... Gina Rodriguez as Jane and Jaime Camil as Rogelio. Source: Foxtel

The series has become one of the year’s critical hits, named by the American Film Institute as one the 10 best shows of 2014 and it was nominated last week for two Golden Globes (best comedy and best comedy actress).

Although it’s become instant Hollywood folklore, the story Rodriguez turned down a role in Marc Cherry’s Devious Maids because of its portrayal of Latinos, isn’t quite true.

“I didn’t, I passed on the possibility of testing,” she clarifies. “(I thought) I can’t let this be my introduction to the world. I can’t go against everything I stand for. As much as I can’t pay rent, I can’t do that.”

Growing up in Chicago in a household struggling for money, she says she watched her two sisters work “their tails off” to become an investment banker and a doctor. So when Rodriguez became an actor she was determined not to take stereotypical Latino roles as maids, gardeners, gang members or drug addicts.

“I knew I wanted to be an actor,” she says. “So how do I do what they (her sisters) did, and put it into my art? How do I change the way the world views me and my family?”

“Cheque to cheque” work ... Gina Rodriguez has overcome a lot of hurdles to find success. Source: Foxtel

Rodriguez has battled other obstacles, too, including a serious thyroid condition she developed at 19, which caused her to almost drop out of university, and left her with body image issues.

“It directly affects your metabolism,” she says. “It contributes to the thing Hollywood kept telling me as a kid … ‘You’ll never be able to be an actor because you’re not skinny enough’.”

But Rodriguez believes everything happens for a reason. “I realised this was going to have to be a part of accepting myself and giving to others who didn’t see, not only their skin colour, but who didn’t see their shape on screen,” she says.

She even appreciates Wild Blue’s Christmas cancellation.

“It helped me realise the kind of woman I wanted to be. I started working on my character and my soul and realising that the posters will come down. Jane, I love her, and I want to be with her for life, but she will end. And I think the best way to prepare for the future is to love and embrace the present.”

Jane The Virgin, Fox8, Monday, 7.30pm