Once again, Moreno was stuck under that brown makeup, and forced to talk writers through why she didn’t feel comfortable with lines like the original musical lyric, “Puerto Rico/ You ugly island/ Island of tropic diseases.” But this time, her dancing chops, comedic timing, and power as a dramatic actress made her talent undeniable-and forced an industry that for so long had treated her as “starlet” arm candy to regard her as a real performer.īut it was also in 1961, after production on West Side Story had wrapped, that Moreno attempted to kill herself with sleeping pills in Brando’s apartment, after enduring the actor’s numerous affairs, emotional abuse, and a botched abortion. In 1961, however, Moreno’s life hit two major turning points.įirst, while making West Side Story, she was able to find a role model in her character, Anita-a self-possessed woman with an uncrushable spirit. “I mean, what’s she going to do? Walk me to school? My mom had a job.” “I never told my mom about this because instinctively I knew there was nothing she could do about it,” Moreno said. “It got to the point where I couldn’t do anything unless I had an accent.” The non-stop parade of degrading roles brought back Moreno’s childhood memories of being bullied with racist insults on her way to school. “Ultimately it just broke my heart,” Moreno said. Singin’ in the Rain gave her better material to work with as the “it” girl Zelda Zanders, but then it was back to the same as before. She played characters of countless ancestries, and developed an unchanging “universal ‘ethnic’ accent” that she used across them all. Like Rita Hayworth, who began using her mother’s maiden name partway through her career after her Spanish-American father’s last name, “Cansino,” kept relegating her to “exotic” roles, Moreno consistently found herself playing characters that required her to be painted dark brown and speak with an accent. “I thought, wow, that’s what I was aiming for,” Moreno said of landing her MGM contract. She coiffed her hair into that iconic bob and begged her mother to buy her a waist cincher-and she rejoiced when Mayer exclaimed, “This looks like a Spanish Elizabeth Taylor!” Mayer at the age of 17, Moreno styled herself like Elizabeth Taylor. So when she landed a meeting with MGM boss Louis B. There were basically no visible Latinx performers in the industry whose footsteps Moreno could follow. And director Mariem Pérez Riera, mother of Marcel Ruiz (who plays Moreno’s grandson in the recent One Day at a Time reboot), offers a fascinating window into Moreno as both a person and a part of Hollywood history.

But given the experiences that shaped her life and career, it’s actually not too hard to believe.Īfter more than 50 years in Hollywood, Moreno is long overdue for the documentary treatment.

And indeed, these kinds of statements do tend to reek of false modesty. “You have to know me to believe that, I know,” Moreno grants during an interview with The Daily Beast. When Brent Miller, a producer of the newly debuted Sundance documentary Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go for It, first approached her with the idea, Moreno said, “I really was tempted to say, ‘Um, really?’ What’s so interesting about me?” It’s a rich question coming from a legendary performer who once also had a years-long, tumultuous affair with Marlon Brando, but Rita Moreno insists that she asked it anyway-or at least thought it.

Rita moreno and marlon brando