One of the characters which added to the NCIS popularity is definitely the smart and but-kicking detective Ziva David portrayed by beautiful Cote de Pablo.

Cote was born María José de Pablo Fernández on November 12, 1979, in Santiago, Chile. When she was 10, her family settled down in Miami Florida. Moving places wasn’t easy for Cote who needed to learn a new language and make new friends. It was during her school years that she decided to be called Cote, mainly because her classmates had a hard time pronouncing her birth name right.

Over time, she found her place under the American sky.

But I was raised here. And I found my niche because I went to a performing arts high school. 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,” she told Prevention. “It wasn’t till I got to the United States that I learned to speak English.

“Those were defining years for me. I always describe myself as sort of a hippie. Deep inside, I’m not a glamorous person,” the actress added. “I come from a traditional, conservative world. But this kind of hippie world at school allowed me to explore the creativity and imagination that live inside all of us.”

Once in America, Cote’s mother started working for Telemundo, a Spanish-speaking television channel, and Cote inherited the love for arts from her.

At the age of 15, Cote co-hosted episodes of the Latin-American talk show Control with former Entertainment Tonight host Carlos Ponce. She attended Carnegie Mellon University where she studied music and theatre.

After appearing in commercials and a number of television series, including ones in All My Children and Fling, Cote was cast to portray Ziva David on NCIS from 2005 to 2013. She later made short comebacks, but didn’t return as a regular in the show.

Speaking of her character, Cote said that she and Ziva had a lot in common. “My character’s strength is like mine, to a completely different degree. Losing family members because of a war,” Cote told Prevention. “I have moments when I just have to hold my heart. But I also have to remember that if I played the character from my point of view, she’d be falling apart all the time. She has to keep it together–it’s the world she grew up in.”