Rita Moreno: If I wasn’t Hispanic, I’d have had a different career
Famed for her role in West Side Story, Rita Moreno says the discrimination she faced in Hollywood stopped her from getting good parts in other films.
“Had it not been for the fact that I’m Hispanic, I would have had a different career,” she says.
Now aged 90, Rita Moreno has overcome typecasting to become an elite performer known as an EGOT – the winner of Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony awards – something only 17 artists have ever achieved.
“You sink or swim,” she says, “and I just opted to swim.”
“My mom left Puerto Rico and came by ship to America, New York City. Like many women from Puerto Rico she didn’t know a word of English,” says Moreno.
Moreno describes leaving Puerto Rico as a “reverse Wizard of Oz”, going from the brightly colored island of her birth to the grey, industrial island of Manhattan.
Aged just 18, she signed to MGM Studios. But in what would be her first clear experience of how little power she had in that era, the teenager known as Rosa Dolores Alverio was forced to change her name.
“They didn’t know what to do with me because of my name,” she says.
“I didn’t like the name Rita but they chose it because I liked the actress Rita Hayworth. Moreno was my stepfather’s last name so I took that.”
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