Rosa Maria Perez born September 6, is an American actress. Perez's performance in Fearless earned her a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress , among other accolades. Perez additionally had a role in season 2 of the Showtime series, Your Honor. Her father was from Aguadilla , Puerto Rico. Her mother already had five children when she became pregnant with Rosie after having an affair with Serrano. Perez was born at the now-closed Greenpoint Hospital in the Greenpoint neighborhood of Brooklyn.
One of 10 children born to her mother, Perez grew up in Bushwick with her siblings while their mother was intermittently jailed. Her mother gave birth to her youngest child while incarcerated.
She was for a time raised by an aunt and then, like her siblings, went through group homes and foster care. She and her siblings were often split up. She was transferred to a group foster home and lived in foster care in New York and Peekskill until the age of eight.
She was legally considered a ward of the State of New York until age Her mother and aunt frequently visited, and her father made an unsuccessful custody bid at one point. When she was in third grade, Perez learned that she had a speech impediment. At 19 years old, [ 12 ] Perez started her career in the early s as a dancer on Soul Train. As a student at Los Angeles City College , [ citation needed ] with plans to major in biochemistry , [ 13 ] she said she relieved stress by going to nightclubs for ladies' night.
A talent scout from Soul Train asked Perez to appear on the show. She was not a professional dancer, but loved it so much she dropped out of school. In , she co-starred with Javier Bardem in Perdita Durango , a film in which many scenes of violence, sex and nudity were edited out of the version released in the United States but remained intact in the version released throughout Latin America.
