Spend just a few minutes with Rosie Perez and you know she is being totally honest when she says, “I am a positive person. I never think of the glass as half empty. I just keep pushing forward.”

She is proud of a career that includes an Oscar nomination for “Fearless” – a star making role in Spike Lee’s, “Do the Right Thing” and her current starring role as Googie Gomez, a singer in a gay bathhouse in “The Ritz.” Taking the role was at first intimidating, Perez says, because the part was originally played by Rita Moreno – the Puerto Rican actress who won a Tony. Perez says that Moreno, who also won an Emmy, Grammy, and an Oscar, was Perez’s idol growing up and inspired generations of Latino and 바카라 후기 Hispanic women who followed her to stage and screen.

Perez told Moriarty about her emotional response when she met Moreno for the first time, while presenting an award to her. Perez says she made a fool of herself by breaking into tears. Moreno was shocked and told Perez to “pull herself together.” Some time later, Perez was invited to a dinner party at Moreno’s home, where the older actress apologized and told Perez that, until that moment, she had no idea of how much she meant to young Hispanic women.

Perez says that she didn’t start out hoping to be an actor. She planned to study marine biology when she moved to Los Angeles to attend college. While she was dancing at a Los Angeles nightclub one evening, she was asked to appear on the TV show “Soul Train.” Later, at another nightclub, Perez says she got into an argument with a “skinny man” who turned out to be filmmaker Spike Lee. He liked her spunk and offered her a part in his film, “Do The Right Thing.” The rest is show biz history.

Her documentary “Yo Soy Boricua, Pa’Que Tu Lo Sepas”, shown in New York earlier this year, deals with subject matter other filmmakers would not explore when Perez presented the idea to them – the forced sterilization of Puerto Rican women. So Perez took on the project herself. Actor Jimmy Smits is the narrator.

Presidential politics is another matter of concern for Perez. She told Moriarty she finds it “troubling” that the candidates in both parties are largely ignoring the concerns of “the Latin-American population here in this country. Watch the debates, the only issue on the table is immigration.”

Perez says “smart, savvy politicians” would be reaching out to one of the fastest growing minority groups in the country, with some 17 million registered voters. That they don’t, Perez, told Moriarty “is insulting.”

When she is not working, Perez says a perfect afternoon is walking her dogs in the park near her Brooklyn home, sharing a good home-cooked meal with her boyfriend and watching a great movie. That she says “is bliss.”

She lived in Manhattan for a while, but didn’t like the noise, the traffic, not knowing her neighbors, and decided to return to the borough where she was born and raised – moving to a tree lined, quiet, residential neighborhood.

No doubt about it, Perez says, “I’m a lucky gal.”