Rosie Perez

Rosie Maria Perez is an Academy Award-nominated American actress, dancer, and choreographer. She choreographed the dance scenes in Do the Right Thing (1989) and In Living Color (1990 to 1992). She produced Subway Stories: Tales from the Underground (1997) and The 24 Hour Woman (1999), and directed Yo Soy Boricua! Pa' Que Tu Lo Sepas! (I'm Boricua, Just So You Know!) in 2005. She has also appeared in more than a dozen movies.

Born on September 6, 1964, in Bushwick, Brooklyn, New York, Perez started her career as a dancer on Soul Train. She later went on to choreograph music videos for Bobby Brown, Diana Ross, and LL Cool J. She also choreographed the dancing group, the Fly Girls, who appeared in every performance of In Living Color.

Perez went on to nurture the career of another Latina Fly Girl, who became the superstar Jennifer Lopez.

She made her acting debut in 1989 as Tina in Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing after the film director spotted her in a dance club and hired her. Her co-stars included Ossie Davis, Danny Aiello, Samuel L Jackson, John Tuturro and Ruby Dee.  She followed that role up with parts in Criminal Justice (1990) with Forest Whitaker, Anthony LaPaglia and Jennifer Grey, Night on Earth (1991) with Winona Ryder, Giancarlo Esposito and Gena Rowland, White Men Can’t Jump (1992) with Wesley Snipes and Woody Harrelson, Untamed Heart (1993) with Christian Slater and Marisa Tomei, and Peter Weir’s Fearless (1993) with Jeff Bridges, Isabella Rossellin and Benecio Del Torroi. For her role as Carla Rodrigo in Fearless she won an Academy Award in 1994 in the Best Supporting Actress category.

For most of her films she plays up her natural Brooklyn accent to make it thicker and more nasally sounding. Her normal speaking voice is much easier to understand.

In 1999 she married filmmaker Seth Zvi Rosenfeld, but they separated in November 2001. On January 6, 2000, she was arrested for disorderly conduct in Manhattan following a rally to protest US Navy bomb tests on Vieques, a small island off the coast of Puerto Rico.

In November 2002, Perez co-starred with Joe Pantoliano in Frankie and Johnny on Broadway, New York. She has also appeared in Craig Lucas’ Broadway production Reckless alongside Mary Louise Parker.

Perez’s last acting role was in 2005 when she played Bertha in the American television movie Lackawanna Blues. The movie is set from the 1950s to the 1960s and is based on the musical play that dramatized the real-life story of Ruben Santiago Jr.

Perez is a Puerto Rican Activist who fights for the rights of Puerto Ricans in their homeland and in America. The only film she has directed, Yo Soy Boricua! Pa' Que Tu Lo Sepas! (I'm Boricua, Just So You Know!), was about this fight and was released in 2006.

She currently lives in Brooklyn and likes to practice Kung Fu in her spare time.