Lana Parrilla reveals she lived in her car early in her career
The "Atlas" star and "Once Upon a Time" alum opened up the time she was homeless: "It terrifies me still to this day."
Actress Lana Parrilla, known for TV hits such as Once Upon a Time and Lost, as well as the new Jennifer Lopez movie Atlas, has a long list of roles to her name nowadays, but she will never stop thinking about when she was so broke that she lived out of her car. It was all she could afford.
"There was a time, early on on my career — and it was very early on — I was living on my own, like 19 years old. It was a really hard time," she tells host Tommy DiDario on Tuesday's episode of the I've Never Said This Before podcast. "My family and I were in different places, and I was kind of left on my own."
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Parrilla explained that it happened when she was in school and trying to break into showbusiness.
"It was really hard to support yourself and, you know, chase after a dream, and also try to get an education all at the same time. I couldn't do it all," she says. "I had to drop out of college, which broke my heart and I had to figure how to make more money to support myself."
She ended up homeless.
"And so I was living out of my car for a couple months," she says. "I was, like, staying on the floor at friends' places in their little apartments."
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Lana Parrilla attends the "Atlas" premiereIt's an experience that she says she'll never forget.
"And it terrifies me still to this day," Parrilla says. "That, like, that could ever be a reality for us as artists."
Parrilla noted that seeing others experiencing homelessness breaks her heart. It also drives her.
"There's always like a little part of me, in the back of my head, that's like, 'Oh my god, don't ever stop working so hard," Parrilla says, noting that this fear forces her to "be more creative and find new ways to make money and find all these different ways to, like, develop projects. and do you own thing and take on all these new talents."
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She doesn't want to end up where she was as that teenager.
"At 19 years old, it's different," she says, "but, at 46, it's a lot scarier."
Parrilla's latest project is the Netflix sci-fi movie Atlas, in which she stars alongside Lopez, as well as Sterling K. Brown and Simu Liu.
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