Michelle Rodriguez says her role in a controversial film The Assignment (released in the UK as Tomboy) – a movie about a male assassin who is forcibly turned into a woman, with one of the most hashtag-problematic plots to emerge in recent times – allowed her to realise her own femininity.

The film was widely panned by the transgender community, but the film’s screenwriter Denis Hamill hit out at critics last week.

Rodriguez has spoken again of the film, after previously defending it.

She told Page Six:

I had to tape my breasts down, and I still looked like a hermaphrodite.”

Going on she said playing the character made her realise she had been more feminine than she thought:

All my life I felt alienated by women. They were into the lipstick, nails, and dressing up, and I always felt like a tomboy, like I didn’t fit in.

I felt like I had masculine qualities versus feminine qualities just because I am an alpha. I do what I want, and never let anybody tell me otherwise. I am kind of hardcore about that. But then when I go and actually play a man, I realized I am such a girl; there is nothing manly about me.”

I was so confused growing up, so it took playing a man to make me a woman.”

Rodriguez previously rejected criticism of the film because she is bisexual.

What is transgender? Is it a psychological thing or is it an operation, and does the LGBTQ community own the operation? Do they have a branding right over a sex change?

Are they mad that somebody decided to take their branded transgender operation and use it on heterosexual people? It’s a B-movie noir genre comic book take on something.

I’m bisexual. I do guys. I do girls. You can’t really argue with me because I’m you. So if I do a movie, I’d never do a movie with the intention of offending anybody in the LGBT community because I’m a part of it.”