Rosie Perez: 'If I wasn't discovered by Spike Lee, I still would've been successful'
theGRIO VIDEO - In an interview with theGrio, actress Rosie Perez talked about being discovered by Spike Lee, and confessed that she would have been...
Rosie Perez has partnered with Pine-Sol to empower women to share stories of strength and encouragement.
The Brooklyn-born actress, who was discovered by Spike Lee and landed her first major acting role in Do the Right Thing (a film celebrating its 25th anniversary next year), opened up about the director’s influence on her career.
Perez told theGrio’s Chris Witherspoon that she would have made it big in Hollywood with or without the help of Spike Lee.
“As a child I always knew I was going to be successful,” Perez said. “I never thought I was going to be a multi-millionaire or anything like that, but I always knew that I was going to be successful and that I was going to contribute to the world. So if I wasn’t discovered by Spike Lee I still would have been a force to be reckoned with and I think there there’s no shame in that.”
The White Men Can’t Jump actress weighed in on the possibility of black and Latino actors coming together to create a ‘blatino’ Hollywood, and also reflected on her time as the choreographer for The Fly Girls on In Living Color.
I think that I was picked by Kennen Ivory Wayans for In Living Color because he was a New Yorker. He came from Chelsea projects. He didn’t say oh your Puerto Rican, you could never choreograph hip-hop. He was like ‘oh your Puerto Rican, you wanna choreograph hip-hop?’”
Click here to learn more about Pine-Sol’s Women Rise Above It campaign.
Follow theGrio.com’s Entertainment Editor Chris Witherspoon on Twitter @WitherspoonC
