Michelle Rodriguez interview:'Battle: Los Angeles'actress is not'fancy Hollywood type'

In the event of an alien invasion bearing down on Earth,Michelle Rodriguezisn't going to show up as the damsel in distress or as eye candy for the hero— no matter how stunning she can look on the red carpet.

No, she's coming packing heat.

"When us chicks don't remove our clothes and we don't play the girlfriend, there are not a lot of roles out there,"Rodriguez tells the Daily News,"so I got to play it safe and take the roles I can."

"Safe"for the 32-year-oldJersey Cityproduct is relative. She has become locked and loaded as Hollywood's go-to action queen, on a roll of butt-kicking roles in films like"Machete,""Avatar"and"The Fast and the Furious."

Now, in"Battle: Los Angeles,"opening Friday, Rodriguez stars asMarine Sgt. Elena Santos, part of a platoon ofMarinesbased near the City of Angels enduring a close encounter of the aggressive kind from an alien armada.

Sure, the space invaders may be CGI, but there's nothing fake about getting up at 5 a.m. every day to train in a camp with a bunch of Leathernecks.

"For two weeks it was like full throttle,"says Rodriguez."That's where I got the abs for‘Machete' actually— those hundred situps, the 50 pushups and the 2-mile run every morning.

"But the shooting. That stuff I love, I could do that with my hands tied behind my back."

"Battle"director Jonathan­Liebesman says Rodriguez"is believable as a strong female action hero— you know she is physically capable of what her character is going through, and she has the emotional intelligence that you want to go on the journey with her."

The journey began more than a decade ago, when as a then-unknown from the wrong side of the tracks, Rodriguez beat out hundreds of other actresses inNew York Cityto snag the main role in the 2000 indie drama"Girlfight."

The idea of a Hollywood career seemed pretty alien to a teenager born inTexas, raised inPuerto RicoandNew Jersey, who preferred video games over wearing lipstick and hanging with the girls.

But Rodriguez was willing to go to the mat to succeed as an actress. So she hit the weights, gained 25 pounds of muscle for the role and knocked the wind out of the critics.

A few years later she gained even more exposure in the drag-racing thriller"The Fast and the Furious."

There have been speed bumps along the way since then— most notably a 2005 DUI arrest inHawaiiduring the filming of season 2 of"Lost."Her character,Ana Lucia, not exactly a fan favorite anyway, was immediately written off the show.

"I feel that my personal life experience got in the way of the evolution of the character,"she says."So I didn't get an opportunity, or {the writers} didn't get an opportunity, to fully flesh her out."

She has grown up since. When she's not in front of the cameras, she can be found training aboard one of the ships of theSea Shepherd Conservation Societyfleet, a group that engages whaling ships and tries to enforce international conservation laws on the seas.

Get her started and she'll reel a listener in with a sermon on the dangers of overfishing.

That doesn't mean Rodriguez doesn't have fun with this whole actress thing. Between takes on"Machete,"she raced out to the front door at directorRobert Rodriguez's Troublemaker­Studios inAustin, Tex., and straight to her rentedCamaro. It was impossible to pass by all that free space in the studio parking lot and not wear some tires out doing some serious doughnuts.

Laughing at the memory, she explains,"I'm not exactly the fancy Hollywood type."

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