Personality Complex: "Machete Kills" Star Alexa Vega Is Way Past Child's Play

The actress gets candid about fame and fake friends.

October 11, 2013

Image via Complex Original

Personality Complex is a regular feature of Complex's Pop Culture channel, where you'll be introduced to rising stars of film and television.

Alexa Vega is in a hurry. It's a Wednesday afternoon in Los Angeles and she's mildly out of breath from rushing into the car that's taking her to LAX. She's racing to catch a plane to Austin, Texas, where her film Machete Kills will open Fantastic Fest. The sequel—directed by Robert Rodriguez and starring supreme badass Danny Trejo—follows the titular hero as he's tasked by the U.S. government to take down a notorious arms dealer on the brink of starting a nuclear war. Vega plays Killjoy, a bodyguard at a brothel with a knack for machine guns.

Vega apologizes for calling a few minutes late for the interview, though apologies aren't necessary. The minutes are miniscule. Given she's been doing this Hollywood thing forever, 21 years to be exact, you'd expect her to be jaded and mail in celebrity duties like annoying homework. But she's not. The 25-year-old actress speaks like she's still excited about anything and everything that's happening to her. You wouldn't even know that a potential missed plane ride is on her mind. Despite the chaos around her, she focuses on right now.

As told to Tara Aquino (@t_akino)

Personality Complex: "Machete Kills" Star Alexa Vega Is Way Past Child's Play

Personality Complex is a regular feature of Complex's Pop Culture channel, where you'll be introduced to rising stars of film and television.

As told to Tara Aquino (@t_akino)

Growing Up in the Industry

Born in Miami, Alexa Vega moved with her family to L.A.'s San Fernando Valley in support of her budding career in entertainment. At four years old, the actress landed her first role as Burt Reynolds' daughter on Evening Shade. The oldest of six kids, Vega was enamored with the camera, even getting behind it to film horror movies with her sisters.

"We were those kids who always knew we wanted to make films. I don’t know how I didn’t kill any one of my sisters. For this one horror film we were making, I made my own harness for my sister. I wrapped her in all these ropes, but then also put a noose around her neck and hung her from a tree. Now I think, 'What if my harness didn’t work?' I’m so lucky that nothing ever happened."

"Two of my little sisters are in the industry. My little sister Makenzie is on [the hit TV show] The Good Wife. She’s going to NYU with honors studying Neuroscience. My other sister is more behind the scenes. She couldn't stand the idea of acting growing up."

"I was fortunate enough to be enrolled in a regular school. I went to Notre Dame High School in Sherman Oaks and I ran cross-country, and I played waterpolo, soccer, and basketball. Having to go back and forth between school and filming would sometimes be frustrating because I loved school. It was my chance to be around other people my age. But when you’re leaving school to go to a set that's filled with kids your age, then it's fine. In that way, it wasn't a big deal when I had to leave to go film Spy Kids."

"I don’t know life any other way, and I love it. You always hear these stories of people who grew up in Hollywood and they’re like, 'We lost our childhood.' But I was very fortunate. Sure, there were long days on set, but as a kid, I knew that about the work."

Being "That Girl from Spy Kids"

In 2001, Vega got her big break: a starring role as Carmen Cortez in Robert Rodriguez's fantasy-adventure flick Spy Kids. The film was a massive success, earning over $147 million worldwide and spawning three sequels, with a fourth on the way. But that kind of exposure had some drawbacks. It turned Alexa into "That Girl From Spy Kids."

"I really enjoyed my time at Notre Dame and I think that you do eventually find your little niche, but I don’t have one personality. That's really hard in high school because everybody wants to pick one group for you."

"Freshman year was really bad. It's already hard starting high school, but going in as a 'Spy Kid' is probably the worst thing you could have done. And my mom didn’t make it easier. I just wanted a normal backpack, but Spy Kids was awesome and they gave me this giant bright orange backpack that had the word SPY across it. That was my only option and I wore it to school everyday. Half the time I would stuff it in my locker and try to carry all my books."

"I was not cool at all. Kids poured soda on me. It wasn't like you could run up to a teacher and tell on them. You get so embarrassed that you’re like, 'OK, I don’t want to rat this person out because not only am I the loser, but I’m the loser who’s a tattletale too.'"

"I’ve found my friends now, but you can always tell whether someone wants to be your friend just because you're famous. But it's so much worse when people are trying to prove that they really don’t care about you."

"I never really worried about being known as that girl from Spy Kids for the rest of my life, though. What I'm thankful for is that those movies were awesome and the people involved were great. I think the second you start worrying, it starts to overtake you. You just have to keep doing what you're doing and hopefully people will see you as something else."

On Maturing

Once you're a child star, you're always a child star. That is, unless you miraculously find a way out. Now it's time for Alexa Vega to see if she'll go the way of Natalie Portman or that girl who played Punky Brewster.

"I'm 25 and people are still like, 'Oh my gosh, Machete is so grown up for her!' It's absolutely different from what you’re used to seeing me in. Most people go back to the kids movies I did and I'm fine with it. To be honest, I want to be in those movies as long as I can 'cause you can only do them for so long."

"You can't just grow up overnight. You have to remember that baby steps are important. You need to allow yourself to grow. I think at some point it just becomes crazy. Like Miley's VMA performance—the girl is actually talented, and I know that she’s capable. But when you watch her performance, she doesn’t seem in control."

"I’ve always taken on roles that really appeal to me. Sometimes they work out and sometimes they don’t. The hard part nowadays is that everything that gets offered to you expects you to take your clothes off. It's amazing that this is what actresses are getting a lot. You end up having to turn down a lot of projects."

Tabloid Attention

Nothing is sacred in the spotlight. Vega learned that the hard way when, in July of 2012, tabloids started exposing the then-23-year-old's divorce to 36-year-old producer Sean Covel, whom she married in October 2010. But that didn't faze her. She recently got engaged to Big Time Rush singer Carlos Pena.

"Obviously, you get married with the intention of staying together. Honestly, if I had to go back, I would do it the exact same way. Sean is a wonderful person and he was everything that I needed at that time of my life that I was in. When we were together, it was perfect. But we were both smart enough to know that we both had outgrown the relationship and we were holding each other back. We tried everything before making that decision, but people staying married for the sake of being married is not healthy at all. We're still very close. He was one of the first people to find out that I was engaged again because I felt like I owed that to him. He’s such a huge part of my life."

"Thankfully, where I am now is a different place from when I was in the middle of a divorce. We were able to keep it under wraps that we were broken up for a while before the divorce even came out. It was nice because it gave us the opportunity to be by ourselves and not have to answer questions."

"Keeping my engagement to Carlos a secret was a lot harder. Pictures started going up. It was frustrating. At that point, I was like, 'We might as well just tell people because they’re going to find out anyway.'"

"The attention is sweet and flattering to an extent, but sometimes it's frustrating because you want it to be your own, yet it ends up becoming everybody’s business. Carlos and I have the perfect world because we’re known enough to be able to do fun things, but it's not so crazy that when we travel we have to be incognito. I don’t know how Justin Bieber does it. If you’re Katy Perry and you want to go on a vacation with a guy that you’re with, how do you do that?"

Joining "Machete Kills"

**Since Spy Kids, Vega has starred in a handful of films, namely 2011's From Prada to Nada. Just take one look at her filmography though and it's clear: Machete Kills is her most badass movie yet.**

"My character Killjoy is a badass hitwoman. She works for Sofia Vergara, who's our main protector. She’s neither bad or good. Her goal is to keep The Girl [played by Vanessa Hudgens] safe. If that means a good guy comes in and starts trouble, she’ll take care of it."

"Working with Sofia was awesome. I really thought that her accent was aput-on, but it's not at all. And filming was a lot of fun. Robert Rodriguez is not afraid to tell people to go for it. If there’s a stunt, he’s like, 'No, the actors are going to do it.' That’s how he was when I worked with him when I was little. You just assume you’re going to do everything yourself, so it's up to you to train for it and be prepared, or show up to set and really suck at it."

Working with Robert Rodriguez

To be able to say that Machete Kills director Robert Rodriguez is your biggest believer is enviable. He's the dude who helmed Desperado and From Dusk Til Dawn, brought you Sin City and Planet Terror, and yet somehow managed to fit in a children's franchise [Spy Kids]. He's a cult film hero, who also happens to be Vega's biggest confidante.

"Robert has has given me every opportunity that I’ve had in this business. If you go back to Spy Kids, he set all those stepping stones for me. Now that I’m in a transitioning period, Robert and I were able to come up with something that was fun and tasteful with this role in Machete."

"He’s been there during very pivotal moments in my life, whether it was on set or while I was growing up. He was around literally during my first kiss and my first boyfriend during Spy Kids. He walked me down the aisle when I got married. When I was getting a divorce, he helped me through it."

"And I've always been there for him. To have that is super helpful, especially with somebody in this business. He knows what it's like to go through something in the spotlight, where people are looking at you and judging everything that you do."

"I wrote a comic book with my partner Chris 'Doc' Wyatt, who produced Napoleon Dynamite. We wrote this comic called Suicide Lane about this crazy motorcycle chick who seeks her father’s revenge. It was something that I had started when I was 13 on Spy Kids 2. I brought the idea to Robert and he was like, 'Save that, because when you’re older, it's going to come in handy.' Sure enough, it did. Fingers crossed that all goes well, but Robert and I talked about trying to develop it into a television series. "