Actress Jackie Cruz, who plays Flaca in the Netflix original series Orange is the New Black, visited campus on Oct. 23 to speak at an event hosted by OLÉ (Organización Latina Estudiantil).
Orange Is The New Black is a show that describes the lives of diverse women who are spending time in prison. Most of the show’s drama stems from the tensions that ensue when different cultures are forced to coexist.
At the event, Cruz discussed her life. She first developed her passion for singing and acting early in her childhood, after she saw the movie The Body Guard.
“I was born in Queens, N.Y. However, I was raised mostly in the Dominican Republic, and that’s where it all started, [in] Santiago, my home town. My mother took me to the movies at age six to see The Body Guard. It was dubbed in Spanish, but Whitney Houston sang in English. After the movie I said, ‘Mommy, I want to be like that girl on the big screen, the singer and actress,’” Cruz said.
Cruz defined this as her moment of clarity and said she felt fortunate to have this revelation at the young age of six, whereas some people do not realize what career they want to have until later in life.
“I was really lucky because at age six I didn’t have those layers of insecurity, fear and doubt that we acquire as we get older,” Cruz said.
Cruz added that, regardless of one’s specific aspirations, the first step in reaching one’s goals is to state them out loud.
Cruz went on to discuss the role that her mother played in her early life.
“My mother had me at age 15, so my aunts helped raise me, along with family friends. I was lucky because I was surrounded by a lot of love... My mother saw I had something to offer the world, so at age six she started putting me in acting classes [and] vocal lessons. I started to play the saxophone... After my mother heard me singing and acting, she saw that I was really serious about it and said, ‘Where can I move Jackie if she wants to be a performer?’... So at age 15, we went to Hollywood.”
Applauding her mother’s efforts, Cruz told the audience that without courage and boldness, no difficult goals can be reached.
Cruz recounted her experiences with working in restaurants like Baja Fresh while also going to high school and taking acting classes. At one point, she began to hang out with what she described as a bad crowd, and she ended up living with one of the girls in that friend group during her senior year. This girl eventually got into a car accident while she was racing and Cruz was sitting in the passenger seat; she described it as the one day on which she was not wearing her seatbelt.
Cruz was thrown out of the car and had to go through an array of surgeries for all of her injuries.
“They were going to open me up through my trachea, but my mother, she was concerned about my voice. She said, ‘Let’s give Jackie one more day,’” Cruz said.
The next day, Cruz began to breathe on her own. After her two-week stay in the hospital, Cruz returned to the Dominican Republic with her mother. As she improved and regained control of her body, her mother urged her not to give up on her dreams.
Cruz moved back to Los Angeles and, after searching for an agency to film with, finally became a guest star on a TV show. This marked her first on-screen appearance. She eventually moved to Florida with a filming crew, but according to Cruz, the manager of the project failed to pay her. She stayed in Miami until she could save enough money to move and then relocated to New York City, where she worked as a waitress until she was hired at a nightclub in the city.
Cruz soon began to gain public traction when some of her music videos played in Times Square. Eventually, she was hired as part of the cast of Orange is the New Black.
Students stayed back after her story to ask questions, which included inquiries about the state of racial integration in Hollywood, her favorite scenes or lines from the show and the most difficult scenes for her to film.
“If you leave with anything today, leave knowing [that] no matter where you come from or what hardships you have been through or are going through right now, don’t let anything stop you from dreaming and chasing, dreaming and chasing,” Cruz said.
