(Photo credit: Cosmopolitan)

Next month, Michelle Rodriguez's new film "Fast & Furious 6? will hit theaters-but don't expect to see the actress on the big screen again for a while.

"I'm about to say goodbye to acting for a minute and move behind the camera," she tells Cosmopolitan for Latinas in its Summer 2013 issue. "I got into this business to write. I've waited 13 years to actually do it. Do you know how painful that is? It's very painful."

Rodriguez, 34, has been a Hollywood mainstay for years, starring in the "Resident Evil" franchise, the "Fast & Furious" franchise, and the ABC TV series "Lost." But she's also had a series of legal issues. In 2004, she pleaded no contest in L.A. to three traffic violations, including hit-and-run, drunken driving and driving with a suspended license, and the next year, after racking up a series of traffic violations, she was charged with drunk driving again. In 2007, she violated probation and was sentenced to jail time, but was released early in 2008 because of overcrowding.

"I had some bad moments. I partied hard. The world knew it," she admits in the magazine, on stands April 30. "I feel like my growth is a progression. It's like you're about to fly out and head to Ibiza another year in a row and your gut's telling you, 'No, stay home and write.' I go forward and I've had times when I go back."

Rodriguez continues that last year, she had "a bad stretch," because of her rebellious nature-but now she's ready to focus on her career.

"That means I have to do the cutoff," she says. "I'll go into the mountains, and bye-bye everybody. Well, I'm a Cancer so…it's in my nature to hide."

(Photo credit: Cosmopolitan)