Rosie Perez

Rosie Perez was born in Bushwick, Brooklyn, New York City, to Lydia Perez and Ismael Serrano who was a merchant marine. Rosie is Puerto Rican. 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 just starting her second year in college and was scheduled to return to New York. Her friends had invited her to an excuse to go away party. When Spike Lee proposed that she participate in his film Do the Right Thing (1989), she accepted. It was her first major acting gig. In Peter Weir's Fearless (1993) she played the supporting character Carla Rodrigo, for which she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Artist. (She lost to Anna Paquin for The Piano (1993).) The Latin community was the source of the majority of my criticism in the beginning of my career. They would invite me to lunch and say, "Can I go and learn lessons to lessen my accent?" or, "When it's a talk show, how could you not be so funny? I received a lot of crap about my voice, and I even tried. Although I tried to change my voice, it was not the way I spoke. As I got older, the octaves decreased, thank God. It's about pushing past your fears. Boxing is all than just fighting for your self. Floyd Mayweather could be punched with a straight shot across his middle and he'd not hesitate. I can understand what he is doing. (Who has mentioned Don Cornelius's fascination with her dancing]: Don Cornelius was not interested in watching me perform. I was dancing hip-hop, which was not a style that was familiar to Californians. They didn't know anything about hip-hop dancing, and only were aware of locking and popping. Don was thinking, "No. You're an attractive girl. I thought, What? It's really bizarre. It was really strange.