Immigration Debate Impacts Eva

By: Brian Dakss

As "Desperate Housewives" star Eva Longoria makes the move from the TV screen to the big screen, the United States is engaged in a great debate over the future of immigrants.

And, on The Early Show Friday, Longoria told co-anchor Harry Smith she's well aware of the deeply divisive issue, and does her best to help the cause of fellow Latinos in the U.S. by giving off the most positive image she can in whatever medium she's in.

"I love to somehow, in some way, contribute to the positive portrayal of Latinos in the media," she said.

Longoria took a break from playing the sexy vixen of Wisteria Lane to make "The Sentinel," with Michael Douglas and Kiefer Sutherland, among others.

She portrays a rookie Secret Service agent about to team up with a no-nonsense investigator, played by Sutherland.

She admitted to Smith it was a nice break.

"I mean," she quickly added, "I have the greatest day job in the world with 'Desperate Housewives.' But, it was nice to go from a set of estrogen to a set of testosterone."

She also admitted she was "actually star-struck, probably every day, when the director (Clark Johnson) would go, 'Michael, Kiefer, Eva, come over here,' and he'd try to explain something to us. And, every time I just heard my name in the same sentence it was really, I felt like it was an out-of-body experience."

Longoria's career skyrocketed when "Housewives" became a mega-hit and she concedes, "It seems like it's happening to someone else and I'm just watching. So it's fun."

She played a character who was, as she put it, "bad to the bone" for three years in the soap, "The Young and the Restless" and notes, to her relatives, that was the peak of any possible success.