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People always ask me: 'Do you have black in you? Do you have Spanish in you?'

Some of us talk about other people and what they do and la la la. But I'm not that person.

When you look at me, you can't really tell what I am, but I'm black, white, Native, Spanish, and a little bit of Filipino.

When people first meet me, they're always like, 'What are you?' as far as ethnicity. And I've been pegged as 'ethnically ambiguous.'

I'm here not just as an actress but as a woman, an African-American, a granddaughter of Ellis Island immigrants, a person who could not have afforded college without the help of student loans and as one of millions of volunteers working to re-elect President Obama!

There's a certain consistency to who I am and what I do, and I think people have finally said, 'Well, you know, I kinda get her now.' I've actually had people say that to me.

I am half Puerto Rican, a quarter German and a quarter black. That was always a big issue for me - being mixed race - because casting directors tended to be very like, 'OK, are you Hispanic for this role?' 'Or is she going to be African American?'

As an Italian-American, I have a special responsibility to be sensitive to ethnic stereotypes.

I've gone into auditions, and I think they have an assumption about me when they see my photo, and then I open my mouth, and they say, 'Where exactly are you from? And you were born in Ethiopia? But you're Irish, but you also kind of sound English. That's really strange.'

I had one incident where my daughter said that a girl asked if she was a brown person. I said, 'We're black. You have black people, white people, Chinese people, Hispanic people; we're all brought up differently.'