Emily Rios

Emily Rios is an American actress of Mexican descent who first drew wide attention as a teenager for her breakthrough performance as a pregnant teen in Quinceañera (2006), directed by the married gay filmmaking duo Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland, for which she won the Sundance Film Festival's Special Jury Prize for Acting. She went on to appear in Across the Universe (2007) and to build a substantial television career, including a multi-season role as Andrea Cantillo on Breaking Bad (2008) and as reporter Adriana Mendez on The Bridge (2013), in which she played an openly lesbian character. In 2014, Rios came out as gay in an interview tied to her work on The Bridge, telling AfterEllen she related personally to her character's experience, saying, "I'm gay, personally, so being Mexican and a lesbian — this is why I love the character." She has spoken candidly about coming out to her Mexican Catholic family and about the scarcity of openly queer Latina actresses in mainstream television, describing her hope that her visibility helps young queer women of color see themselves reflected on screen.