When proud New Yorker Rosie Perez moved to California, she had no intention of becoming
famous. But she nevertheless went on to establish herself as a successful actress, choreographer,
and TV personality, which is quite remarkable considering the odds she was up against. This
is her tragic real-life story.
In her 2014 memoir, Handbook for an Unpredictable Life, Perez revealed that her mother Lydia
briefly left her longtime husband for another man when she fell pregnant with his child.
They moved into a Brooklyn apartment together, but things were over before Perez was even
born, as her dad jumped out of the window when her mom allegedly pulled a gun on him
and didn't look back. Perez's mom returned to her husband just before she was born, but
there wasn't a place for young Rosie.
Fortunately, her Aunt Tia was happy to have her. She took her in when Rosie was still
an infant, and the future actress spent the first three years of her life believing that
her aunt was her mother. The arrangement worked for everyone, until Lydia showed up out of
the blue and demanded that the child be turned over to her. With no legal right to keep hold
of her, Tia reluctantly let her go, and then within a few days, Lydia did the same thing,
abandoning Rosie at a Catholic children's home in Westchester County. In an interview
with Aljazeera America, Perez admitted,
"From the day I could remember her, I felt rejected by her."
Being ripped away from her loving aunt was traumatic enough for three-year-old Rosie
Perez, but thanks to some abusive nuns, living at St. Joseph's Catholic Home for Children
wasn't much better. Not all the staff members were violent, but a few managed to make Perez's
life hell. As the actress told Aljazeera America,
"There were certain people that were supposed to be taking care of me that were hurting
me. But as a child, everything was very clear to me. It was confusing at first: Who's my
mother? Who's my aunt? Why am I here? Who are these people with the funny scarves on
their heads?"
The worst perpetrator was a nun named Sister Renata. Perez went so far as to call her "evil
incarnate" in her memoir, as she went into detail about a disturbing incident that allegedly
took place when she was just six years old. After Perez was caught giggling, Sister Renata
ordered her to stand face-up against a metal locker for an hour. The nun kept watch, and
when Perez's eyes started to close, Sister Renata banged her head into the locker. This
wasn't an isolated incident, as Perez claims that Renata also used to regularly backhand
her across the face. Despite the abuse, there were some hints of Perez's future success
during her time at the home.
"Even in the home, the nuns always picked me as the lead in their Hollywood productions."
When Perez was eight years old, she got the chance to join her half-siblings at a group
home upstate, which allowed her to finally enroll in the regular school system. The move
was good for her, but her visits home to see her mother were anything but. Her siblings
informed her that their mom was schizophrenic. All Perez really knew was that she would sometimes
get punched for no apparent reason. Her mother also hadn't lost her love of firearms. On
one home visit, she walked her daughter into a convenience store with a concealed gun and
forced her to shoplift. Even though her mom treated her horribly, the rejection still
hurt. As the actress told Aljazeera America,
"That's the crazy dynamics that exist with the abuser and the person being abused — especially
a child and their parent. You want your parent to love you. You want your parent to want
you. Then after a while, after they beat you down so much, you want them even more."
Luckily for Perez, the welfare system gave her the support that she needed to succeed,
something she's eternally grateful for. As she told Aljazeera America,
"Certain policies allowed me to better myself, because I wanted better, and I knew I was
better."
The group home was a huge improvement for Perez, but it was still a dangerous place
for a young girl to be. Instead of an abusive nun, there was a sketchy counselor who was
later dismissed after an assault allegation was made against him. He once allegedly cornered
Perez's half-sister and would've likely assaulted her had Perez not been there to intervene.
Sadly, though, nobody was there to help Perez when she was subjected to assault herself
in the one place that she should've been able to feel safe: her mother's home. To make matters
even worse, the perpetrator was another family member.
As Perez revealed in her memoir, on two separate occasions during her childhood, her half-brother
assaulted her. The alleged attacks took place when she was home visiting her mother, who
reacted violently after her daughter told her what had happened. She was beaten and
branded a liar by her mom, and her brother was never prosecuted for his crimes. According
to Perez, all of her siblings were victims, and helping them break the cycle of abuse
was the most important thing to accomplish.
"What were you like as little Rosie?"
"I was complicated."
"In what way?"
"Um, well, you know, I didn't- I had a bittersweet childhood."
When Perez left her group home when she was 14, she moved back in with her Aunt Tia. She
was happy to finally be back, even if there wasn't much cash to go around. As she described
the situation to CNN,
"Once, when work was slow and money was tight, my aunt cut up some Slim Jims — she worked
at the factory in Brooklyn — and put it in the rice as meat for dinner. We looked
at each other and I could tell she was embarrassed but just then she said, 'Hehehe,' and we started
laughing so hard."
Aunt Tia enrolled Perez at Grover Cleveland High School in Queens, where trouble found
her once again. She was involved in regular schoolyard altercations, but none of it fazed
her until another student decided one day to pull a razor on her and threatened to cut
out her dimples. That was the final straw for Perez, who decided it was time to put
New York City in her rearview mirror and start over fresh in California.
"I was a sweet girl. It's just, if you pissed me off, you'd see the other side."
The very first time that Rosie Perez traveled abroad, she experienced racial profiling.
Authorities at London's Heathrow Airport subjected her to a full-body search because they assumed
that she was a drug mule. Sadly, things weren't much better when she returned to America,
as she discovered that respectable acting roles were rather hard to come by for a woman
of color. As she told People Magazine in 2018,
"When I first started in this industry, they didn't want [diversity]. They wanted me to
be completely whitewashed [...] I've never shied away from portraying my Puerto Rican-ness."
In her memoir, Perez revealed that she almost didn't get to play what's arguably her most
iconic role in 1992's White Men Can't Jump, because producers were nervous about her ethnicity.
They were also concerned about the interracial aspect of her relationship with Woody Harrelson's
character. Harrelson wasn't having any of it, though, as he clicked with Perez during
her audition, and he stood his ground against the bigwigs. The rest is history, but that
kind of discrimination is still rampant in Hollywood, according to Perez. As she told
People,
"I think it's really, really important for Latin actors and actresses to go out for roles
that are not specifically designed for a Latino character [...] Let them know that we're not
just one thing... we're human beings first and Latinos second."
Considering all the hardships that Perez endured in childhood, it shouldn't be too surprising
to learn that she's been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. She spent years believing
that she'd gotten over everything that happened to her. But when she finally plucked up the
courage to talk to someone, she realized the burden she was still carrying. In 2014, she
told Time Magazine,
"Initially it wasn't a relief [...] It was kind of like, 'Oh my goodness, I'm human.'
I didn't have that much control over my emotional response, the way I thought I did. And then
there was this big sigh and it was like a weight was lifted off of me."
Perez didn't decide to talk to a professional about her traumatic past until well into her
adulthood, partly because of the stigma associated with mental health where she grew up. In 2014,
she told CNN,
"I've heard racist remarks that refer to getting psychotherapy help as 'being white' [...] Therapy
is not a 'white thing,' it's a clinical thing."
Perez is one of the many actresses who've spoken out against disgraced movie mogul Harvey
Weinstein, who was sentenced to 23 years in prison in March 2020 after being found guilty
of two charges related to assault. In January of that year, Perez testified that fellow
actress Annabella Sciorra told her that Weinstein had assaulted her. Perez claimed that Sciorra
made the confession back in the mid-90s, but she was sworn to secrecy by her terrified
friend.
Sciorra initially refused to identify her attacker. A few months later, though, Perez
heard a rumor that Weinstein had been harassing Sciorra in London and the penny dropped. She
called her friend, and her fears were confirmed. Both women broke down in tears at this point.
Perez said that she then begged Sciorra to go to the police, but she replied,
"I can't — he'd destroy me."
Rosie Perez has never enjoyed flying, but she decided to get over that fear for the
HBO Max series The Flight Attendant, because star Kaley Cuoco really wanted her on board.
Production on the show was temporarily shut down due to COVID-19, a disease that Perez
was very familiar with. In fact, she'd contracted the novel coronavirus while traveling to Thailand
to shoot the show in 2019. As she explained to Uproxx,
"At that time, they were saying it's a new respiratory tract infection. It’s a virus
that’s going around. We don't really know what it is and what it does, but it attacks
the respiratory system first and then travels to other parts of your body."
What happened next left Perez terrified. As she recalled,
"I remember my manager was with me, and I said, 'Tarik, don't let me die in Bangkok.'
And he goes, 'Oh my God, you're scaring me.' And the head of the ICU says, 'You should
be scared, sir. This is serious. We're going to have to put her in a separate room.'"
So Perez found herself isolated in a foreign country as the virus made its way through
her. She suffered from a fever, a cough, aches, and fatigue, with the whole experience leaving
her scared that she might die.
"I remember seeing just my husband, and my sister, and my father, who's deceased, and
I said, 'Oh my God, don't let me die in Bangkok.'"
Against all the odds, Rosie Perez became a successful, Oscar-nominated actress, and now
she's using her platform to encourage people to open up about their own mental health struggles,
especially people of color. She's seen too many people shun the help that they need out
of a misplaced sense of pride, and she wants to put an end to it. As she told the New York
Amsterdam News in 2014,
"As people of color, sometimes we don't get the mental help we need. We might go to a
church or something, but that's not enough. I was hit in the head repeatedly — physically,
mentally and emotionally. But I understood my spirit and I honored my spirit. I understood
that I was special. I wanted to be the best me I could be, so I went and got help."
Perez believes that if speaking to somebody worked for her, then it can work for anyone,
but finding the right person to talk to is absolutely essential. She tried a few different
professionals before she settled on one who understood her wants and needs. As she told
Shondaland.com in 2020,
"A friend introduced me to a psychoanalyst and we clicked. She didn't let me get away
with things [...] She said, 'If you're not going to be truthful, this isn't going to
work.'"
After years of struggles, Perez was finally able to take control of her demons, and she
sounds happier than ever.
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