RITA MORENO

Rita Moreno was born in Puerto Rico in 1931. She showed her amazing talents even as a teen, but because she was super sexy and "Latin", Hollywood stuck her solely in sexpot type roles (her first movie was So Young, So Bad, in 1950!) and in 1954 she was even on the cover of Life magazine in a sexy pose, with the title, "Rita Moreno: An Actresses' Catalog of Sex and Innocence."! Most actresses in that situation would have spent the rest of their careers playing Latin "bad girls", but Moreno wanted much more, and she had the talent to do so! Her breakthrough performance was as Anita in West Side Story and she won the Oscar as Best Supporting Actress. She has since alternated between movies, Broadway, and television, and is one of the few performers to have won an Oscar, a Grammy, a Tony, and an Emmy! In 1997 to 2003 she added considerably to HBO's ultra-gritty "Oz" series, as Sister Peter Marie Reimondo. And amazingly, in 2021, she had a major role in Steven Spielberg's remake of West Side Story, playing the widow of the store owner (and doing a fine job)! As of 2022, she is still alive at the age of 89!