"I'm a video game fan. I played them before I became an actress"
About this Quote
The intent reads as preemptive self-defense against the standard celebrity cycle: discover a geeky interest, get accused of pandering, watch the internet litigate your “realness.” By foregrounding her history with games, Rodriguez is refusing the gatekeepers’ favorite weapon: the idea that women arrive late, coached by publicists, or only after the hobby becomes socially profitable. She’s claiming continuity. Not “look at me being relatable,” but “this is already mine.”
There’s also a canny piece of identity politics in the understatement. Rodriguez’s star persona has long been built on toughness and blunt refusal of scripts - on-screen and off. Aligning with video games reinforces that image while sidestepping the soft-focus stereotype of actresses as curated, detached from “kid” culture or tech culture. Subtext: you can be Hollywood and still have an inner life that isn’t performative.
In the late-2000s/2010s celebrity landscape - when gaming became mainstream but its communities stayed aggressively policed - a sentence this plain does real work. It’s not a speech; it’s a boundary.
Quote Details
| Topic | Career |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Rodriguez, Michelle. (2026, January 17). I'm a video game fan. I played them before I became an actress. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/im-a-video-game-fan-i-played-them-before-i-became-67735/
Chicago Style
Rodriguez, Michelle. "I'm a video game fan. I played them before I became an actress." FixQuotes. January 17, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/im-a-video-game-fan-i-played-them-before-i-became-67735/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"I'm a video game fan. I played them before I became an actress." FixQuotes, 17 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/im-a-video-game-fan-i-played-them-before-i-became-67735/. Accessed 25 Feb. 2026.





