Rosie Perez was born May 16, 1963 in Brooklyn, New York. Perez had an unpleasant childhood, but turned her life around after being sent to a group home for cutting a woman's throat at age 12. She got her start after being spotted in a dance club by a "Soul Train" producer. After "Soul Train" she was spotted again by Spike Lee and cast in her first role in Do the Right Thing. Soon after ward she was acting in such movies as White Men Can't Jump, It Could Happen to You, and co-produced HBO's "Subway Stories". Some of her recent work includes a voice-over in The Road to El Dorado and a role in The 24 Hour Woman.

ROSIE PEREZ'S high-strung performance as a plane crash survivor in Fearless put her in line for an Oscar in 1993. She grew up one of ten children in Brooklyn, New York, and was placed in a group home after cutting a woman's throat when she was 12. She took remedial speech lessons to cure a speech impediment that made her pronounce her first name "Wosie." In college, she studied marine biology, but her moves were spotted by a Soul Train producer at a dance club one night, and he put her on the air. She was then noticed at L.A.'s Funky Reggae club by Spike Lee, who cast her in Do the Right Thing. As a choreographer, Perez designed the dances for the Fly Girls of TV's In Living Color, Diana Ross, and Bobby Brown. In front of the camera, Rosie gives it her all, which often times is too much — check out her shrill performance as Nicolas Cage's greedy wife in It Could Happen to You.

Rosie Perez, in one of her non-movie star moves, was riding the A train in New York City's underbelly, when a man- "a little guy, really," she says- walked into her car and pulled out a gun. "Everyone here today is going to die," the man said to no one in particular.
Perez's first thought was that, after all she had been through, it would be ironic if she in died such a prosaic way. So she began to laugh. Softly first, then hard and loud. A woman next to her snapped: "Shut up. We are all going to die. What's wrong with you?" That made Perez laugh even harder. A man who minutes before had been flirting with her was the first to join in. Soon, another person began laughing.
At the next stop, the confused and humiliated gunman darted out of the subway car, but not before shouting over his shoulder, "I was really going to do it. You guys are lucky."
Rosie Perez, actress, choreographer, and producer, is very lucky indeed. That moment in the train, when she saved herself and her fellow passengers with with her laughter, was Perez in a nutshell. She has an almost magical ability to turn a negative into a positive.
And last month, two years after that dramatic incident, she appeared on HBO as coproducer and one of the leads of Subway Stories, an anthology of short films that she conceived after her subway scare.
More than a movie star, Perez says she wants to be a character actress, someone like Italian actress Anna Magnani or Hollywood's Barbara Stanwyck, both excellent performers who never rose to the levels of Sophia Loren or Katharine Hepburn.
"I'm focused, but I don't have tunnel vision," she says. "If there is a lot of work, wonderful. If not, the way I look at it, I'll have more time to go to Puerto Rico and look at the pretty boys on the beach."

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