Jennifer Esposito has been a busy, working, recognized actor for nearly 30 years, yet to produce, direct, write and co-star in “Fresh Kills,” a movie straight from her heart, she mortgaged her house to make this dream come true.

“I got to the point where I was so tired of hearing ‘No.’ And so tired of being angry about it,” Esposito, 51, said in a Zoom interview of bringing to vivid life a decades-spanning story of two sisters growing up in a Long Island Mafia family.

“People I’ve known in the business for a long time that could have helped by just putting their name on it, just didn’t.

“I thought, ‘Well, why is anybody going to bet on you? Who are you? Oh, right. Let me bet on me.’

“I thought, at the end of my life am I going to be really excited that my home was paid for? Or am I going to be really excited that I made a piece of art that is going to stand the test of time? I was really clear that it was making that piece of art. So I don’t regret it at all. Really, I don’t.”

She filmed what she knew.  “I grew up seeing this life around me. In the young women especially that I was in school with, the fights, the violence and the rage that I witnessed was more with the women than it was with the teenage guys!

“I thought, Why are these young women so angry? That stayed with me. I guessed it’s because their family’s in the Mafia.

“I left Staten Island to pursue an acting career — and wound up with years of being told who I am, what I was in this business and how I was to do this or do that.

“That anger that I witnessed in these young women started to feel familiar to me. I realized it was less about their families being in the Mafia and more that they were born into a slot that they didn’t choose.

“Underneath the whole storyline with the Mafia, it’s really a movie about finding a voice in a world that tells you not to have one.

“That’s the essence really of the movie and where it came from for me.”

That explains why Rose (Emily Bader) doesn’t speak, which is a huge hurdle for a first-time filmmaker.

“To me, it was the best way to represent how I felt. We don’t even talk about the fact that she doesn’t speak. It’s not a major point because young females’ voice, any female voice, didn’t feel important.

“That portrayed exactly what I was trying to get after.”

“Fresh Kills” opens June 14