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After stealing the show in movies like Do the Right Thing, White Men Can't Jump and Untamed Heart, actress and dancer, Rosie Perez will soon star in films with Jeff Bridges and Nicholas Cage. Perez is also starring in an HBO special which puts the spotlight on rap music. From New York, Mandalit Del Barco profiles Rosie Perez, the multi-talented Nuyorican.

Hi! Oh, I know where that is. That's in this neighborhood, babe. [nat sound]

At Fort Green Park in Brooklyn, up the street from Spikes Joint where filmmaker Spike Lee sells clothing and memorabilia, Rosie Perez sits on a park bench to talk about growing up not far from here. She remembers living with a big extended family in a low income area of Brooklyn called Bushwick. That's where she caught the dancing bug that eventually made her famous.

Because they used to go to the disco all the time with the hustle and everything. So, they used to use us as their partners and stuff and they would burn holes in our stockings and then our socks. They would twirl us around so much. I'm like, "All right, man, I'm tired." "Get up!" They wanted to be the king of the disco, you know, and stuff. And that's how we started.

[highlight hip hop music]

After high school, Rosie moved to Los Angeles to study biochemistry and ended up choreographing for singer Bobby Brown, rapper LL Cool J and Diana Ross. Her big screen break came in 1989 when Spike Lee cast her as Gloria, who danced like a prize fighter and cursed up a storm as his girlfriend in Do the Right Thing.

That's it. All right? [movie excerpt]

I have to get my money from Sal. I'll be back. All right? [movie excerpt]

Shits to the curb, Mookie, all right? And I'm tired of it, all right? Because you need to step off with your stupid ass self, okay? And you need to get a fucking life, Mookie, all right? Because the one you got, baby, is not working, okay? [movie excerpt]

After Do the Right Thing, Rosie landed a gig choreographing the Fly Girls on TVs In Living Color, where she brought hip hop dancing from the New York streets and nightclubs into mainstream America. After stints on TV shows like 21 Jump Street, Rosie's film career took off, playing rather loud characters like she did in the film Night on Earth. To avoid being stereotyped, Rosie says she fought hard to win roles like the Jeopardy! game queen in White Men Can't Jump.

Jeopardy! is going to call Billy. It is my destiny that I triumph magnificently on that show. [film excerpt]

Who is Peter the Great? Who is the Emperor Constantine? [film excerpt]

It's like when people think of Latin women, they think of kind of just sex-crazed maniacs that are kind of lightheaded and not really that smart. You know what I mean? And everything. And I hate that. And that's why I went after White Men Can't Jump with a vengeance because you got to be smart to get on jeopardy and win money. And, to my agents, I said, "I got to get this role, man. And I got to keep her Puerto Rican, man." I know they wanted a white girl, an Irish girl from Boston, initially for the role. I said, "But, yo, if I get in there, I got to represent, man. You got to keep her Puerto Rican, man." Look at films, look at TV. We're always the maid. We're always the one that's having the extramarital affair. Wearing the tight dress and ay... You know, all that and everything. That's fine, but don't pigeonhole us and don't have that represent us as a whole.

Soon Rosie Perez will be starring with Jeff Bridges in Fearless and with Nicholas Cage and Bridget Fonda in Cop Gives Waitress $2 Million Tip. She's also producing her own projects, including a possible film about the Puerto Rican independence movement. Comedian David Alan Grier works with Rosie on In Living Color.

The thing I like about her is that she's a hustler. I mean, she has this plan. She's building this power base. And she's got her own company, she's managing groups. I'm going to be asking her for a job in just about two or three years. She's a powerful woman.

[hip hop music highlight] [nat sound]

Grier also calls Rosie the harbinger of hip hop, youth culture that includes street dancing, graffiti and rap music. HBO, in fact, is now airing a series on hip hop that she executive-produced. The show Rosie Perez Presents Society's Ride features cutting edge rappers before a live audience at a New York nightclub. While Leaders of the New School, Brand Nubian, and Heavy D and others rock the crowd. Rosie gives the flavor backstage and on the dance floor. [background hip-hop music]

Hi!

Hi!

Society's Ride means... Leaders of the New School, the Electric Records recording artists, they gave me the name. Because I said, "I want to take people on a ride to my world. I want them to see what I feel and what I do and how I be living and everything." And they were like, "Society's ride. Society's ride." And so it just stuck and everything. And the hip hop community gets it. Everybody else goes, "what?" But that's cool. But that's what the show is about. We're showing you real. We'll teach you. We'll take you on the ride. We're in the driver's seat this time.

Rosie says HBO was nervous about the rap special at first, thinking the material would be too racy for TV. But at a time when radio and TV waters down or sensors rap lyrics, she says she fought the network to let the artists show the real deal, uncensored. With this latest project, Rosie hopes to be taken seriously as a Hollywood producer because being boss is something she loves.

I feel great. I keep all the money.

The show Rosie Perez presents, Society's Ride is airing Friday nights on HBO. For Latino USA. I'm Mandalit Del Barco in New York.