Rosie Perez

Rosie Perez was the daughter of Lydia Perez, a merchant marine, and Ismael Serano. She was born in Bushwick Brooklyn, New York City. Rosie is of Puerto Rican descent. Rosie has graduated from Grover Cleveland High School in Ridgewood in Queens, New York. Later, she enrolled at Los Angeles City College. Rosie Perez was in her second year of college and just about to move back to New York from Los Angeles. Her friends had thrown her an event to celebrate. The moment Spike Lee proposed that she take part in his movie Do the Right Thing (1989), she accepted. It would be her first major role in acting. She was to play the role of Carla Rodrigo in Peter Weir's Fearless (1993) and for which she received an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. (She lost to Anna Paquin for The Piano (1993).) Early in my career, the Latin community was the source of my most of the negative feedback I was subjected to. They would take me out to lunch and say, "Can I go and take some lessons to reduce my accent?" Or, "When it's a talk show, how are you going to not not be funny? My voice was a constant source of criticism. I tried to alter it. It was my voice that I didn't want to change. I am grateful that my octaves decreased as I became older. It's a matter of pushing past your fears. It's about fighting your own. Floyd Mayweather could get punched with a clean punch down the middle to his face - and he'd be adamant about it. And I know what he is doing. He mentioned that Don Cornelius was fascinated with her dancing]: Don Cornelius was not interested in seeing me actually dance. I was doing hip-hop and it was a different style for Californians. They didn't know anything about hip-hop dancing and only knew about locking and popping. Don was just like "No I'm not going to. You're an attractive girl." I thought "What?" This is so strange. It's really bizarre.