Chances are you know Michelle Rodriguez from either the Fast and Furious movies or one of several other films where she shoots guns, kick people in the sack and generally doesn’t take an ounce of shit from anyone. As it turns out there’s a reason for this, mainly Rodriguez’s staunch refusal to ever let herself be cast as a woman who can’t snap a man’s collarbone with a karate chop.
If you’re not familiar with Miss Rodriguez’s expansive portfolio of work, a quick look at her IMDB profile will tell you everything you need to know about the kind of characters she normally plays. Rodriguez has shot zombies in the face in Resident Evil, stomped covenant dickhole alongside Master Chief as a marine in Halo 2 and most recently beat the piss out of Ronda Rousey in Furious 7.
In fact, with few exceptions Rodriguez has near-exclusively played tomboy characters who are shown as being equally as capable as if not more so than their male counterparts who then usually dies because (male) audiences don’t want to see that shit. That’s not us being factitious, it’s a widely acknowledged trope of Hollywood movies that a capable female character will invariably die before the end of the film. A trope suitably named after Jenette Vasquez from Aliens.
Like Vasquez, most of the characters Rodriguez has played have been killed on screen, leading to critics suggesting she’s been pigeonholed into a certain kind of role. When queried about this in 2010 Rodriguez admitted that she probably is typecast as capable females character, mostly because she personally refuses to play any other kind.
In the same interview, Rodriguez explained that she has categorically turned down every offer she’s ever received asking her to play a girlfriend or victim in a movie, adding that she’ll only portray a character she respects and feels empowers women and as a result, only got offers to play “the tough chick”. Since she’s pretty fucking good at playing this kind of character, she got more and more offers to play similar roles until eventually she got to star in the 6th highest grossing movie of all time.
In specific regards to her typecasting, Rodriguez has simply stated “I could give two shits“, noting that there’s nothing wrong with the characters she plays and that anyone who did think that could eat a sack of sloppy dicks. Okay we made up that last part, but it’s implied because come on.
Rodriguez has also noted that she could probably stop being typecast any time she wanted by taking a starring role in a shitty indie movie where she gets to cry on screen and show her range. She’s also noted that she has no desire to do that because she gets to do more awesome shit in the movies she’s cast in now, like hang out with Danny Trejo while wearing an eye patch.
If anything it probably says more about the people interviewing Rodriguez that they feel she’d be unhappy only being associated with powerful, capable female characters. Mostly that they can eat a bag of sloppy dicks.
