Things you don't know about Cote de Pablo...On Fow24news.com

If you're a fan of NCIS, you're probably familiar with the character Ziva David, a Mossad liaison officer from Israel who spoke more than five languages. But what about the actress who played this beloved character? Let's just say, Cote de Pablo has her own impressive resume. She has previously described herself as an old-soul, Latina hippie who loves hanging out with her mom. With a description like that, who wouldn't want to get to know the woman behind this character?

Cote de Pablo's real name is actually Maria Jose de Pablo Fernandez. According to Latinos Post, when de Pablo and her family moved from Chile to Miami, Florida, many of the kids at her school couldn't pronounce her name. She changed it to "Cote," which de Pablo said is a common nickname in Chile.

When de Pablo moved to America from Chile at 10 years old, she did not know much English. Learning a whole new language at a young age would be very hard to experience, but de Pablo had one teacher who helped her find her path. She described this on The Late Show with David Letterman (via YouTube), saying, "And so I remember in 5th grade, I had a teacher… who was wonderful and he was an older man. And the only thing I knew really was 'run.' I knew what that meant. And so he put me into the track and field, and so he got me starting to run and all that stuff, and before I knew it, I was a little track and field star. And I remember, he would say in the middle of a competition, he would scream and get very red and scream, 'Cote, run!' And that's all I knew."

Now it's hard to picture de Pablo in any other field aside from acting, but she had her heart set on a different life when she was younger. As she shared with TV Guide, "I, believe it or not, wanted to be a secretary, much like Maggie Gyllenhaal in The Secretary. I had clips all over and markers, and you know, the old-fashioned typewriters… I like to follow direction… and, by the way, I became an actor, so I'm kind of doing it anyway."

And it wasn't just the name that de Pablo had to overcome as she adjusted to a new country. She told Prevention that she didn't start learning English until she moved to Miami. The persistent de Pablo worked hard to learn English, and eventually found her place when she went to a performing arts high school. She described that experience saying, "I had always been interested in the arts, but performing became even more important because it was a way to communicate with people in my new country…My friend had the perfect saying for it: 'You found your tribe.' We're not Chilean or Argentinean or Brazilian or Russian. We're actors."

Not only did de Pablo go to a performing arts high school, but studied musical theater at Carnegie Mellon University. After graduating, she continued on the theater path, appearing on the New York City Public Theater stage for a Shakespeare production. De Pablo was working in San Francisco when the opportunity to audition for NCIS came up. In an interview for Front Row Features, she said, "I was about to do Broadway (The Mambo Kings) right before I got NCIS…so I went from my chance of doing a Broadway show into doing the series." Her risk obviously paid off, but de Pablo wants to get back on the stage eventually. Describing her chance on Broadway, she said, "It's something still pending that I want to do."