Gina Rodriguez in emmy magazine  09/09/2015 AT 03:45 PM EDT  might be one of the  in Hollywood right now, but all of the  star's motivation comes from one place – her father.  When she was 15 years old, "My father got into a terrible car accident," Rodriguez tells  for their October cover story (out Sept. 15). "The car was like an accordion, it was so smashed. They were totally sure we were going to lose him."  It took Rodriguez's father, Genaro, nearly two years to fully recover from the accident, and in that time, he started driving the actress to school, playing motivational tapes during the drive. "It was like, '  This is ridiculous!'" she remembers, laughing. But it was on those car rides that Rodriguez's  "Then he started making me look in the passenger-side mirror every day and say, 'Today's going to be a great day. I can and I will.' At the time, I thought it was so lame. The worst! But he wouldn't let me out of the car until I did it.  "What I came to realize," she admitted of the phrase, which she used to title her upcoming book from Simon & Schuster, "is that there is no better way to live than the way that man lives." (And yes, she still recites it to herself every single day.)  Gina Rodriguez on the cover of emmy magazine  Inspired by the motivation and faith that her father instilled in her, Rodriguez, now 31, is determined to pay it forward for Latina women everywhere – even if that meant passing up a big, buzzy show like Lifetime's  to find a project she believed in like she did  "Jennie [Snyder Urman's] script encompassed this dual-culture identity so authentically," Rodriguez remembered about reading the pilot for the first time. "I met her and I was like, 'You don't see me as a brown baby. You see me as a woman, and that's why this show is so strong. Because you see people as people. You're writing about the human experience. And no matter the ethnicity, we all want love, success, a family. We all want to do it right. That's the human experience.' "  Gina Rodriguez in emmy magazine  for the first season of the show and an upcoming film –  , where she'll share the screen with  – under her belt, there's still plenty that Rodriguez still wants to accomplish, including, directing, producing and voicing an animated character.  "And I want to be a superhero. I want to be an X-Man. Talk about Storm â¦ .I want to create a f---ing storm! My dreams keep getting bigger. I don't expect them to happen tomorrow. But I believe they'll happen before I'm done."  Gina Rodriguez in emmy magazine  After all, she said, "I think you must believe something  happen in order for it to happen. I definitely always believed I was capable of doing all this, as long as I didn't stop trying."  Gina Rodriguez in emmy magazine  returns Oct. 12 to The CW.
The Jane the Virgin star opens up to emmy magazine about the long road to success and what she learned from her father