- Linda Cardellini (Freaks and Geeks, Green Book, Mad Men) began crushing on her fiancé, Steven Rodriguez, when she was 10 years old and he was 11.
- The couple welcomed their daughter, Lilah Rose, on February 29, 2012, and got engaged a year later in summer 2013.
- Cardellini stars with Natalie Morales, James Marsden and Christina Applegate in the hit Netflix series Dead to Me, now streaming season 2.
Praise the streaming gods, Netflix has finally resurrected Dead to Me.
Liz Feldman’s murderous buddy comedy that’s also a meditation on grief, an exploration of the complex female friendship dynamic, and an insider’s view into some seriously plush real estate in Los Angeles is brimming with twists and turns. Starring Linda Cardellini and Christina Applegate as gal pals Judy and Jen, season 2 picks up where the ladies last left us: dangling off a giant cliffhanger.
As Judy, a sweet, optimistic free spirit whose brutal secret in season 1 has now snowballed into a whopper of lies and deceit, Cardellini is the yin to Applegate’s edgy and biting yang. Her love interest, Steve Wood, played by James Marsden, may as well be the evil force threatening to throw off their balance. You’ll be happy to know, however, that when not in character, Cardellini, 44, has been very lucky in love.
Her fiancé is named is Steven Rodriguez, and he’s an actor-turned-makeup artist. Cardellini met her dream man when she was just 10 years old—he was 11 and flaunting wicked bike skills that she found irresistible. Years later, the pair reconnected and realized they should be more than friends. And now, they're parents to a daughter, Lilah Rose.
Before you hit play on your first, next, or finale episode, come with us as we get to know Cardellini and her real-life beau a little bit better.
Linda Cardellini and Steven Rodriguez met when she was 10 years old—he’s actually her very first crush.
Cardellini and Rodriguez first met when they were—get this—ages 10 and 11, respectively. According to People magazine, the two went to grade school together, and she was taken with his gnarly bike skills. “He was 11. He was the new kid at my school,” she said back in 2013. “He could do amazing bike tricks and I was impressed. Not afraid to say it.”
They reconnected years later, around 2010, and realized that they should be more than just friends. “We’ve been friends for years and years,” she said, “and it was not even three years that we got together and realized that we should’ve been doing that all along … It didn’t take long to figure out we were amazing friends and we could probably be great partners.”
“It seems very meant to be,” Rodriguez said.
Before Rodriguez, though, Cardellini dated Freaks and Geeks co-star Jason Segal.
Freaks and Geeks, a coming-of-age period comedy that lasted for only one season, bowed in 2000, but that didn’t stop Segal and Cardellini from continuing their hang out sessions. Segal, who played stoner Nick Andopolis opposite Cardellini who played the mathlete beauty Lindsay Weir, dated for a solid five years, hitting red carpets and posing for press pics together along the way.
Segal even revealed to The New York Times that he may have borrowed details from their speculated breakup to pen the opening scene of a pretty famous comedy.
“I was trying to experience [the breakup] viscerally, as a person,” Segel told the Times. “But all I could think was: ‘This is hilarious. I cannot wait for her to leave so I can write this down.’”
Well, write it down, he did. The “experience” he’s mentioning is the nudie breakup scene that kicks off Forgetting Sarah Marshall, a celebrated raunch comedy starring himself, Kristen Bell, and Mila Kunis, among others. A PG snippet of the NSFW scene can be seen in the trailer below.
Though Segal doesn’t note Cardellini by name in his anecdotal retelling, fans were clever enough to connect the dots (The Playlist does a good job breaking it down). When asked by the Los Angeles Times directly about the Cardellini reference, Segel said, “I can’t control what people think. I was still very much a child [then], and this was more an amalgamation of a lot of different relationships and breakups I’ve had. People are bound to talk, but she was a great girlfriend.”
![jason segel and linda cardellini during hollywood premiere of scooby doo at graumans chinese theater in hollywood, california, united states photo by mirek towskifilmmagic](https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod/images/jason-and-linda-1589295243.jpg?resize=980:* "Hollywood Premiere of "Scooby Doo"")
Rodriguez is an actor too. You may have seen him in the ’90s time capsule Pacific Blue.
Rodriguez’s first acting role was as a guest actor in the 1996 bike cop crime drama that made Mario Lopez a star after Saved by the Bell. Though he appeared in only one episode of Pacific Blue, titled “One Kiss Goodbye,” he went on to land a repeat role in 2003’s short-lived Russians in the City of Angels, another crime drama, this one fronted by Eric Roberts and Gary Busey.
Further roles include Looking for Lola, Clockwatchers, and Passion Before Midnight. Since his last movie role in 2004, Border Blues, Rodriguez has pretty much just laid low on the Hollywood movie scene. Though, today he’s indeed playing his most important role to date: daddy.
The couple welcomed their daughter, Lilah Rose, on Leap Day in 2012.
According to E! News, the former ER actress and her longtime boyfriend welcomed their daughter, Lilah Rose, to the world on a day that many believe holds much spiritual significance, February 29. Months later, the cast of Freaks and Geeks, including good friend Busy Philipps, reunited for a photo shoot with Vanity Fair, offering us this rare and off-the-charts-adorable snapshot of little Lilah.
Access Hollywood caught up with the actress when she was still expecting, and she got candid about the ups and downs about her pregnancy. “Morning sickness was terrible the first four months,” the Bloodline star said. “It was awful. I was kind of a monster! … Now I feel great, and it’s amazing and I can feel kicking and it’s a totally unbelievable experience. It’s a little bit like Alien in science fiction and then also it’s a crazy miracle.”
In another funny story, shared with the ladies of The View, per the Baltimore Sun, Cardellini revealed that she gained more than 50 pounds with Lilah Rose, only to drop as much weight as she could to film several raunchy sex scenes with Jon Hamm for Mad Men.
Linda and Steven got engaged in 2013. And their proposal story will make you weak in the knees.
In June 2013, Cardellini announced her engagement to Rodriguez on The View, sharing her knee-weakening proposal story, which happened the previous night in New York City, with the panel ladies.
“I was surprised that it was happening at that moment,” the Mad Men actress said. “We were actually with some of the people I love most: my sister, and my cousins, and one of my best friends Maura [Tierney] …We were sitting there... and we were all having dinner. He brought my baby out and he started getting choked up, and then he got on his knee. It was very beautiful.”
Nope, they’re not married yet. And they don’t seem to be in any rush.
“Having a family shifts all your priorities,” Cardellini told LA Confidential back in August. “Your capacity for love grows and you suddenly feel the preciousness of time.” It seems as though Cardellini is making the most of that time. With an unwavering career that’s only blossomed since her first role in 1996, the actress has been on a steady climb to superstardom.
“Whatever I do, I want it to be different from anything I’ve done before, which is what I love about producing, writing and directing,” she said. “I get to have more say in what I do.”
Meanwhile, Cardellini’s “other half” has stepped into the role of primary caregiver to their daughter; he’s also a makeup artist and seemingly happy to let Cardellini own the spotlight.
“I was never a party person who had tons of friends. I have a lot of close friends and I keep them for a long time. My other half, he’s one of them,” she said to The Cut in July of last year.
Whether these two ever make it down the aisle or not, we just hope to see them continuing to smile at each other like that for a very long time.
Stream season 2 of Dead to Me on Netflix.
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DeAnna Janes is a freelance writer and editor for a number of sites, including Harper’s BAZAAR, Tasting Table, Fast Company and Brit + Co, and is a passionate supporter of animal causes, copy savant, movie dork and reckless connoisseur of all holidays. A native Texan living in NYC since 2005, Janes has a degree in journalism from Texas A&M and got her start in media at US Weekly before moving on to O Magazine, and eventually becoming the entertainment editor of the once-loved, now-shuttered DailyCandy. She’s based on the Upper West Side.
