Rodriguez is known for her role as Blanca Rodriguez-Evangelista in the television drama Pose, where she is among the largest cast of transgender actors to be starring as series regulars in a scripted show. She is also known for her performance as Angel in the 2011 Off-Broadway revival of Rent, for which she won the 2011 Clive Barnes Award.\n', 'Mj Rodriguez was born on January 7, 1991, in Newark, New Jersey to an African-American mother and Puerto Rican father. Rodriguez attended the Queen of Angels Catholic School. Although she wanted to become an actress since the age of 7, she only began pursuing the profession at the age of 11 after her mother enrolled her in the New Jersey Performing Arts Center—where she became an eight-year veteran of the program and participated in its New Jersey Youth Theater program.\n', 'While she had "prayed to become female" beginning at age 7, Rodriguez states that she was in denial for many years and initially came out to her parents as "bisexual/gay" at the age of 14. At 14, Rodriguez became involved in the ballroom scene where she found support from her house father who taught her to vogue. She is a graduate of Newark Arts High School, and later attended Berklee College of Music, where she was a 2009 Star-Ledger scholarship recipient and a 2009 Young Arts first level scholarship recipient. She eventually took the stage name "MJ" Rodriguez after the Marvel Comics character Mary Jane "MJ" Watson, being a self-described comic book geek and from putting the letters together from parts of her birth name.\n', '

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