Eva Longoria-Parker believes God guided her into acting.

The Desperate Housewives star never dreamed about being an actress when she was at college and is convinced a higher force steered her onto the successful career path.

“Literally one day I said, ‘I’m going to be an actress.’ I never put a thought to it. I never said, ‘When I graduate from college, I want to be an actress.’ That thought never occurred to me. I have a strong faith in God and at that time I felt this amazing guidance coming from above and that gave me strength. It was this special force pushing me to come to Los Angeles and I said, ‘OK, I’m not going to fight it.’ But I always felt very protected. And I felt like this was the place I was meant to be.”

Eva, 34, also revealed she was only led into Hollywood because she entered beauty pageants to pay her way through college to learn to be a sports trainer.

The screen beauty - who is married to basketball player Tony Parker - said in an interview with Prestige:

“I paid a lot of my way through college with beauty pageants. Not necessarily for the beauty, but for the money. Fifth place is free books, third place is books and tuition and first place was books, tuition and boarding. Really, that was my motivation. Through one of the pageants I won a trip to Hollywood to compete in this modeling competition. I graduated college and I thought, ‘Oh, I’ll do that trip now before I do my masters.’ I was already enrolled and packed up, ready to get my masters, and I came to Los Angeles and I never left.”