You probably recognize Jackie Cruz from her role as the tattooed, Smiths-loving Marisol “Flaca” Gonzales on Orange is the New Black, but soon enough you’ll recognize her from her beautiful voice, as well. Her beauty, both inside and out, is what makes Jackie our December Girl Crush.
What makes Jackie so unique is her upbringing. She was raised between Los Angeles, the Dominican Republic, New York, and Miami by a single mother, as well as her aunts, according to her website. But she was homeless by the age of 16.
She told Remezcla.com, “I moved out of my apartment where I was living with my mom. Then, I couldn’t afford where I was living and my mom was like, ‘If you’re a grown up, then be a grown up.’ So, I didn’t have a place to live and I was homeless at 16. I was going from couch to couch and I slept in my car for like a week.”
In fact, she talks about her experience in a song she’s working on called “Sweet Sixteen.” But more came from that experience than she could ever imagine. A short time later, at the age of 17, she was involved in a near fatal car accident.
“I woke up two weeks later with a tube down my throat, not really knowing what happened,” Jackie told Yahoo Beauty. “I was told that I was in a coma for 72 hours, my lung collapsed. It was the end of the world. I didn’t think I could do anything I wanted to do.”
Instead of bringing her down, her accident only pushed her harder to pursue her career in music and acting.
“In high school, I was [making music and acting] at the same time but after high school I worked in a girl group that was on will.i.am’s label. I wasn’t signed or anything I was just working with his label. In the studio, I worked with him and his producers. It was a girl group called Krush Velvet and we just really recorded songs and we were up to get signed but it never really happened.”
But in 2010, she went on to release her own EP Hollywood Gypsy. She is currently working on a new album with her band Crosby Street, which she describes as having a “bluesy, Chicago vibe.”
Her music and especially her acting has made her a role model in the Latino community.
“All Latinas are different. Different sizes, different colors,” Jackie told Vulture. She’s happy that her role as Flaca is a change from the typical Sofia Vergara-type representation of Latina women on TV and in the media. “We don’t all have the big boobs, the curvaceous body, and ‘tauck ike tis.’ No, some of us are born in America, like me, and that’s what Flaca is. I love [that] that’s on television. The Latinos are proud of me, that’s crazy. They’re just happy that it’s finally happening. I am in prison, but what I love about it is they’re real people like me or you, and you could have made a mistake because you’re in love.”
Five things you didn’t know about Jackie:
- She speaks English and Spanish fluently.
- Jackie was inspired to become an entertainer at the age of seven after watching Whitney Houston in The Bodyguard.
- Her audition for Orange is the New Black was her first audition after moving to New York.
- She appeared on two episodes of Kourtney & Khloé Take Miami.
- She has five tattoos—angel wings, an anchor, a lightning bolt, a heart and a lion—all of which have a special meaning to her.
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