Rosie Perez once fired an agent who wanted her to change her ethnicity, the Fearless star has shared.
Perez, who was born in New York City to parents from Puerto Rico, was looking back on her career with Eddie Muller for the TCM Classic Film Festival New York Pop-Up on January 31 when she made the revelation.
“They asked me to change my accent,” she explained about the advice she’s received from others in the industry over the years (via People). “They asked me to change the colour of my hair. They wanted me to be a blonde. They asked me to change my nose.
“They asked me to change my ethnicity,” she continued, adding that she was told she’d “probably get more roles if you say you’re African American.”
She went on, “It was the whole gambit. I remember the first agent who told me that. I just looked and went, ‘You’re fired.’ I just got up and I left. I didn’t need it. I was in college, actually. I was a biochem major, so I was like, I’ll just go back to school. I don’t need this.”
Perez, who’s long been involved with Puerto Rican rights activism – even co-directing and starring in the 2006 documentary Yo soy Boricua, pa’que tú lo sepas! about Puerto Rican culture and history – previously said in 2018 that Hollywood wanted her to be “completely white-washed”.
She told People at the time, “I’ve never shied away from portraying my Puerto Rican-ness… You have to have that tenacity and that self-confidence to walk in a room and say, ‘This is how I see the character and this is how I want to play it.”
Over the years, Perez has also been a vocal critic of US President Donald Trump, notably condemning his response following Hurricane Maria’s impact on Puerto Rico in 2017. The previous year, she appeared alongside the likes of Robert Downey Jr., Scarlett Johansson, Mark Ruffalo and Julianne Moore in a pro-Hillary Clinton ad ahead of the 2016 presidential election, which Clinton went on to lose to Trump.
In recent days, she became one of a number of famous figures to speak out against his current administration, writing in an Instagram post, “There are moments in life when it’s terrifying to stand up for yourself, friends, family, and especially strangers for fear of consequences.
“That’s understandable, but… When the risks are so high, history has taught us that the consequences are even more terrifying when we don’t.”
Perez’s conversation with Muller, meanwhile, came before a screening of the 1957 film noir classic Sweet Smell Of Success, starring Tony Curtis and Burt Lancaster. She spoke about her love for the genre, explaining, “It’s just about human nature. You always think, ‘Oh, I would never do that.’ Really? Put yourself in that situation, and you will find out who you really are. I love that about film noir. There’s an honesty in its depravity. It’s the worst and the best of human nature.”