Detailed Biography

Rosa María "Rosie" Pérez is an American actress, dancer, choreographer, director, and community activist.

Early life

Pérez was born in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Bushwick to Puerto Rican parents. Her mother Lydia Pérez , a singer, was married to Ventura Pérez at the time of Rosie's birth. However, Rosie's biological father is Ismail Serrano, a Merchant Marine with whom her mother had had an affair. Much of her young life was spent in foster care. She attended the Grover Cleveland High School in Queens, New York and a community college in Los Angeles.

Career

Pérez started her career in the late 1980s as a dancer on Soul Train and has choreographed music videos by Janet Jackson, Bobby Brown, Diana Ross, LL Cool J and The Boys. She was the choreographer for the dancing group the Fly Girls who were featured on every performance of In Living Color. She was noticed in a dance club by Spike Lee in 1989, who hired her for her first major acting role in Do the Right Thing.

She made her Broadway debut in Terrence McNally's Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune. Perez had her third major role in the hit comedy White Men Can't Jump co-starring Wesley Snipes and Woody Harrelson.

Pérez was nominated for the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her role in Peter Weir's 1993 film Fearless. In 1997 she starred in Perdita Durango, a controversial film in which many scenes of excessive violence, sex and nudity were edited out of the version released in the United States, but remained intact in the version released throughout Latin America.

She provides the voices of Click, the camera, on Nick Jr.'s Go Diego Go! and Chel, a beautiful native woman in the DreamWorks Animation film The Road to El Dorado. She played corrupt police officer Carol Brazier in the Judd Apatow-produced film Pineapple Express co-starring Seth Rogen and James Franco. It was announced in August 2009 that Perez would appear on an episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit in October 2009 about pedophiles' rights. Executive producer Neil Baer said the writers had Perez in mind when they wrote the role of a young sexual abuse victim’s mother. Most recently, Perez is the subject of a soon to be released album by Felt entitled "Felt 3: A Tribute to Rosie Perez."

Activism

Pérez is an activist for Puerto Rican rights. Her film Yo Soy Boricua! Pa' Que Tú Lo Sepas! documents her activism. She starred in and directed the Spanish AIDS PSA campaign "Join the Fight" for Cable Positive and Kismet Films. The campaign featured actor Wilmer Valderrama, BET's Julissa Bermudez, Telenovela actor Erick Elias, singer/actress Lorena Rojas, 2006-2007 Miss Universe Zuleyka Rivera, and actress Judy Marte. An English-language campaign was also directed by Liev Schreiber.

On January 6, 2000, she was arrested for disorderly conduct in Manhattan following a rally to protest U.S. Navy air weapons training on the government training range owned at Vieques, itself a small island off the coast of then-Roosevelt Roads Naval Station .