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The Tragic Real-Life Story Of Rosie Perez

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When proud New Yorker Rosie Perez moved to California to help her struggling cousin wait subsequently her two kids, she had no intention of becoming famous. The Brooklynite worked a number of part-fourth dimension jobs while studying biochemistry at higher, and in her down fourth dimension, she liked to become dancing at local night clubs. The xix-yr-one-time was throwing shapes at a articulation called Florentine Gardens one fateful evening when she was spotted by a talent sentry from the long-running music and dance show,Soul Train. "Being a teenager, existence asked to keep Soul Train, it was only — it was listen-blowing," Perez told Esquire.

Perez'due south motion picture career got started in like fashion. Legendary filmmaker Spike Lee cast the diminutive dancer as his girlfriend in 1989's Practise the Right Thing later a run-in at Funky Reggae, her favorite club. "He was having a private party there," Perez explained to the Chicago Tribune. "I was on top of a speaker, and he told his bodyguard to pull me down ... He tried to striking on me, then I had to dis him." Lee saw star quality in this feisty woman, who would receive widespread praise for her turn every bit firecracker Tina. She went on to establish herself every bit a Hollywood actress and, after, a Television set personality, which is quite remarkable when you consider the odds she was up against.

From her turbulent and trigger-happy childhood to her overseas COVID-xix ordeal, this is the tragic real-life story of Rosie Perez.

Rosie Perez believed her aunt was her mom

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Rosie Perez took a deep swoop into her troubled upbringing in her 2014 memoir, the brilliantly titledHandbook for an Unpredictable Life: How I Survived Sis Renata and My Crazy Mother, and However Came Out Smiling (with Not bad Pilus). In the volume, the Daily News reports, the actress revealed that her mother briefly left her longtime husband for another man when she brutal pregnant with his child. They moved into a Brooklyn apartment together, but things were over earlier Perez was even built-in — her dad jumped out of the window when her mom allegedly pulled a gun on him and didn't expect back. Perez'due south mom returned to her husband just before she was built-in, simply at that place wasn't a place for the child.

Luckily for Perez, her paternal aunt was happy to take her. She moved in with her as an baby, and would spend the first iii years of her life believing she was her mother. The arrangement worked for everyone — until Perez'southward mother showed up out of the blue and "demanded" the child be turned over to her. With no legal right to keep hold of her, Perez's aunt reluctantly let her get, and a affair of days afterward, her female parent did the aforementioned thing.

Perez hadn't been back with her mom more than a few nights when she was all of a sudden abandoned at a Catholic children'southward dwelling in Westchester County. "From the day I could remember her, I felt rejected by her," Perez toldAljazeera America.

Rosie Perez was terrorized by a 'sadistic' nun

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Being ripped abroad from her loving aunt was traumatic enough for 3-twelvemonth-old Rosie Perez, but her movement to St. Joseph's Catholic Home for Children was made all the worse by the abusive nuns. Not all the staff at the home were violent, but a handful of bad eggs reportedly used to make Perez's life hell. "In that location were certain people that were supposed to be taking care of me that were hurting me," the actress told Aljazeera America. "It was confusing at offset: 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 the woman referenced in the title of Perez'southward memoir, Sister Renata. "I think she was a little bit more than sadistic than the standard strict nun," Perez went on to explicate. "She went overboard." Perez went every bit far as calling Sister Renata "evil incarnate" in her memoir, going into detail about a agonizing incident that allegedly took identify when she was just six years old.

After she was caught giggling, Sister Renata ordered her to stand face-up against a metal locker for an hour. According to Perez, the nun pulled upward a rocking chair and kept watch. "After a few minutes, which felt more like an 60 minutes, my eyes started to shut shut," Perez wrote. "... Bam! Sister Renata banged my head into the metal locker." Sadly, this wasn't an isolated incident — the abusive nun used to backhand Perez across the confront regularly, the actress claimed.

Rosie Perez's real mom used to crush her without warning

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When Rosie Perez was 8, she got the chance to join her half-siblings at a grouping home upstate. She was finally able to enroll in the regular school system, and she unknowingly began to shape her future ("I knew how to choreograph considering I was part of the cheerleading squad in upstate New York," the In Living Color choreographer told Elle). The move was good for her, but her visits home to see her mother were anything but. Perez's one-half-siblings told her that their mom was schizophrenic. All she really knew was that she would sometimes get punched for no apparent reason. Her mother reportedly hadn't lost her love of firearms, either — on 1 home visit, she walked her girl into a convenience store with a concealed gun and forced her to shoplift.

Speaking to Aljazeera America, Perez revealed that even though her mom used to treat her horribly, her rejection withal hurt. "That's the crazy dynamics that be with the abuser and the person being abused — especially a kid and their parent," she said. "Yous desire your parent to beloved yous. Yous want your parent to want y'all. Then later on a while, after they beat you downwards then much, you desire them even more."

It was the state that gave Perez the back up she needed to succeed, something she's eternally grateful for. "Certain policies immune me to better myself, because I wanted meliorate, and I knew I was better," she said.

Rosie Perez was sexually assaulted by her one-half-brother

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The group home upstate was a huge improvement for Rosie Perez, just it was still a unsafe place for a young girl to be. Instead of a sadistic nun, there was a sketchy counselor who was later dismissed after an allegation of rape was made against him. According to Perez, the counselor in question in one case cornered her half-sister in a room and would accept probable raped her had she not been at that place to intervene. Sadly, nobody was at that place to help Perez when she was subjected to sexual assault in the ane place she should have been able to feel safety — her mother's home. To make matters worse, the perpetrator was a family member.

Maybe the almost horrifying reveal from Perez'due south 2014 tell-all book was that her one-half-blood brother sexually assaulted her on two separate occasions during her childhood. The alleged attacks took place when Perez was abode visiting her female parent, who she said reacted violently after her daughter told her what had happened. "You think he would choice you out when you're the ugliest," Perez'south mother told her, as she revealed in her book (via the Daily News). "He tin can option whatsoever of your sisters who are prettier than you."

Perez was beaten and branded a liar by her mom, and her half-brother was never prosecuted for his crimes, per CNN. For Perez, helping her one-half-siblings break the bicycle of corruption (all of them were victims, she said) was the most of import thing.

Rosie Perez learned how to box

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It didn't take Rosie Perez long to become ill of the beatings coming at her from all angles. She realized pretty quickly that she needed to know how to properly defend herself against attackers, and she knew right away which subject area was for her. The actress has been into boxing since she saw Wilfred Benitez (who, like her, is of Puerto Rican decent) lose to Sugar Ray Leonard every bit a teenager. "I wanted to cry because the Boricua lost," Perez toldThe New York Times. "But I was likewise happy because Sugar Ray won. I felt and then guilty most that, merely I just loved the fashion he fought. That's when I knew I was hooked. I was a boxing fan for practiced."

Perez got deep while discussing boxing withAljazeera America, calling information technology "a metaphor for life" during a revealing interview. "Boxing, the sweet science, is to hitting and non become hit," she said. "I had to physically fight back or else, yous know, my a** was going to get kicked. And it did, a lot. And I got tired of it, and then I learned how to box. I learned how to fight."

Perez would continue to utilize her combat skills throughout her career. She boxed during the iconic opening credits sequence of her debut film,Do the Right Matter,and she was all the same throwing punches at 55 when she played disillusioned Gotham Urban center cop Renee Montoya in 2020'sBirds of Casualty.

Someone tried to slash Rosie Perez'southward face in the schoolyard

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When Rosie Perez left her group abode at the historic period of 14, it wasn't her biological mother she moved in with, it was her original female parent — her dearest aunt. She was happy to finally be back, even if there wasn't much cash to go around. "I didn't include this in the volume just once, when work was slow and coin was tight, my aunt cut up some Slim Jim'south — she worked at the factory in Brooklyn — and put it in the rice as meat for dinner," Perez told CNN. "Nosotros looked at each other and I could tell she was embarrassed but just then she said, 'Hehehe,' and we started laughing so difficult."

Perez'south aunt enrolled her at Grover Cleveland Loftier Schoolhouse in Queens, where trouble found her one time once again. "I grew up hard knocks," she explained toThe New York Times. "I learned to fight my manner through life. You get knocked down, you lot get back up again. I think that's why boxing resonated with me so much even equally a fiddling girl." The new girl was involved in regular schoolyard altercations, but none of information technology fazed her until another pupil decided to pull a razor on her one mean solar day, threatening to cut out her dimples.

Boxer or non, that was the final straw for Perez, who decided it was time to put New York City in her rear view mirror and beginning over fresh out in California.

The manufacture tried to white-wash Rosie Perez

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The very first fourth dimension that Rosie Perez traveled away, she experienced racial profiling. Regime at London's Heathrow Airport subjected her to a full-body search because they causeless she was a "drug mule," the actress told Uproxx. Sadly, things weren't much better back home in the United States. Perez establish that, as a woman of color, respectable roles were exceedingly hard to come past.

"When I first started in this industry, they didn't want [multifariousness]," she told People. "They wanted me to be completely white-washed, [but] 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 nearly iconic role in the film,White Men Tin can't Jump, considering producers were nervous about her ethnicity. "The studio, every bit I was told, had a problem that I was Puerto Rican," she wrote, calculation that "they were worried near the interracial aspect" of her relationship with Woody Harrelson's character. Harrelson wasn't having any of it — he clicked with Perez during her audition, and theCheersstar stood his ground confronting the big wigs.

The rest is history, just that kind of discrimination is withal rampant in Hollywood, according to Perez. "I think information technology'south really, really important for Latin actors and actresses to get out for roles that are non specifically designed for a Latino grapheme," she told People. "Let them know that we're not but one thing ... nosotros're man beings first and Latinos second."

Rosie Perez has been diagnosed with PTSD

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At present that yous're enlightened of the many hardships she endured in babyhood, it probably won't surprise you to learn that Rosie Perez has been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. The extra spent years believing she was over everything that happened to her, just when she finally plucked upward the courage to talk to someone, she realized that she'd had a brawl and chain effectually her neck since childhood.

"Initially it wasn't a relief," Perez told Timemagazine (via HuffPost). "It was kind of similar, 'Oh my goodness, I'm homo.' I didn't have that much command over my emotional response, the fashion I thought I did. And and so there was this big sigh and information technology was like a weight was lifted off of me."

Perez didn't make up one's mind to talk to a professional nearly her traumatic by until she was well into adulthood. One of the reasons she avoided getting help for such a long time is considering at that place's a stigma associated with mental health problems where she grew up. "I've heard racist remarks that refer to getting psychotherapy help equally 'being white,'" Perez told CNN. "Therapy is not a 'white matter,' it's a clinical thing." The stigma exists in Hollywood, too. During an interview with Shondaland, Perez revealed that the one time she confided in a producer about her state of mind, everyone on ready constitute out. "I was chastised for reacting, which made me await even more insane in their eyes," she said.

Rosie Perez held onto a dark secret about Harvey Weinstein for years

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Rosie Perez was one of the many actresses that spoke out against predatory movie producer Harvey Weinstein, who was sentenced to 23 years in prison afterward being institute guilty of 2 charges related to sexual assault in March 2020.

In January of that year, Perez testified that extra Annabella Sciorra told her that Weinstein had raped her. Perez said that The Hand That Rocks the Cradle star made the confession back in the mid-90s, but she was sworn to secrecy by her terrified friend. When defence lawyers asked her why she didn't overrule her friend and take it upon herself to out Weinstein as a rapist, Perez said that she was being "respectful" of Sciorra's wishes (via AP News).

Sciorra (who told jurors that Weinstein forced himself on her old in 1993 or 1994 subsequently barging his way into her New York apartment) initially refused to place her attacker, only revealing that she had been raped by someone. A few months later, 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. "I said, 'He's the one that raped you,'" Perez recalled on the stand, adding that both women broke down in tears at this signal. Perez said that she then begged Sciorra to go to the police, only she replied: "I can't — he'd destroy me."

Rosie Perez feared for her life after catching COVID-nineteen in Bangkok

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Rosie Perez has never enjoyed flying, but she decided to take a part in the HBO series,The Flight Attendant, because star Kaley Cuoco really wanted her on lath. Production on the show was temporarily shut down due to COVID-19, a virus that Perez was well aware of long before it started claiming scores of lives in Europe and America.

In an interview with Uproxx, the actress revealed that she contracted coronavirus while traveling to Thailand to moving-picture showThe Flight Attendantin late 2019."At that time, they were saying it's a new respiratory tract infection," she said. "We don't actually know what it is and what it does, but it attacks the respiratory arrangement outset then travels to other parts of your body."

What happened adjacent left the American terrified. "I think 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 caput of the ICU says, 'You should be scared, sir. This is serious. We're going to have to put her in a split up room.'" The extra was isolated in a foreign country, and to make matters worse, the virus was pummeling her. "Hit me like a ton of bricks, [I] knew something was wrong" she told Trevor Noah onThe Daily Show. "I was feverish, I had a horrible cough. Information technology felt like someone was stepping on my breast. And I was very lethargic and I was very scared."

Rosie Perez is at present a mental health abet for people of color

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She became an Academy Award-nominated extra against all the odds, and now Rosie Perez wants to help others open up up virtually their mental health struggles, people of color in particular. The extra has seen likewise many people shun the help that they need out of a misplaced sense of pride, and she'southward out to put an end to information technology.

"As people of color, sometimes we don't get the mental help nosotros need," the dancer-turned-movie star told theNew York Amsterdam News. "Nosotros might get to a church or something, but that's non 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, and so it can piece of work for anyone, only finding the right person to talk to is absolutely key. The New Yorker tried a few different professionals before she settled on one who understood her wants and needs. "A friend introduced me to a psychoanalyst and nosotros clicked," Perez told Shondaland. "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's apparently happier than ever.

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