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He seduced everyone he met, she says – even his psychiatrist. During the course of their relationship, he had numerous affairs and married twice. When she became pregnant, he made her have an abortion. Moreno thought he couldn’t love anybody else because he loved himself so much. No other details.” Her best lover ever? “ Ever!”īut he was also monstrous. He was not only famous, he was the king of sexy actors.” Was he a good lover? “ Oh yes! That part of it was incredible. He was the funniest person I’ve ever met in my life. She was obsessed with him and has compared him to cocaine. In 1953, at 21, Moreno began a tumultuous on-off eight-year relationship with Marlon Brando, regarded by many at the time as the most desirable man in the world. Moreno hoped this would be her escape, but she was soon back playing dusky maidens.
#PRETTY BABY MOVIE 1950 MOVIE#
In 1952, she got a cameo in Singin’ in the Rain as the silent movie star Zelda Zanders.
#PRETTY BABY MOVIE 1950 SKIN#
Her skin would be darkened she would be told to speak lines such as: “Why you no love me no more? Why you like white girl?” in an “exotic” accent. “Illiterate, immoral characters – men’s little island girls,” Moreno says. Nor did she have any idea about the roles she would end up playing. ‘She’s what I’ve always wanted to be!’ Moreno as Anita in West Side Story. It turned into a stalking situation.” Did she realise beforehand what went on in Hollywood? “I had no idea.” “He found my phone number and started to call me all the time. Then there was Buddy Adler, who ran 20th Century Fox. But I was horrified.” If Cohn was alive today, does she think he would be in jail for sex offences? “Yes, I think Harvey Weinstein would have had company. “I had just met the man and he said, with his wife in the room, by the way: ‘You better watch out – I’d like to fuck you.’ That may have been the third time I’d heard that word in my life, and I stood there and giggled. Soon after being raped, she was introduced to the notorious sexual predator Harry Cohn, the co-founder of Columbia Pictures, at a party. “I was so horrified that all I was able to say was: ‘You’re a piece of work,’ and I got up and left.” “I was examining every inch of his face and his soul and, when his wife went to the bathroom, he came back to the day he raped me and said: ‘You know, I always wished I had made you pregnant.’ She repeats his words, still shocked. He said: ‘My wife would like to meet you would you have lunch with us?’” For some reason, she said yes. Moreno met him recently for the first time in 70 years. The shameful thing, she says, is that she kept him on because she thought he was the only person in the industry looking out for her. As a teenager, she was raped by her agent.
Moreno had a brutal introduction to showbusiness. In 1950, at 18, she signed to MGM a year later, she moved to 20th Century Fox. She dropped out of school at 15 and by 16 was the family’s breadwinner.
#PRETTY BABY MOVIE 1950 PROFESSIONAL#
At six, she made her professional debut at Greenwich theatre. From her earliest days, she remembers being called a “spic”. When she was four, her mother took her to New York in search of a better life, leaving behind Rita’s father (whom she saw again only once) and brother.
Moreno was born in Puerto Rico to a seamstress and a farmer. This time, she plays a character specially created for her by the film’s scriptwriter, Tony Kushner – Valentina is the widow of Doc, who ran the sweet shop in the original. It is a testament to her remarkable life and arresting honesty – and the inglorious history of sexual abuse and racism in the film industry.Ī few days later, she features in one of the cinema events of the year – Steven Spielberg’s remake of the Bernstein/Sondheim classic West Side Story, released 60 years after Moreno mesmerised audiences as Anita, the girlfriend of the gang leader Bernardo. Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go for It, a brilliant warts-and-all documentary about her, is released in the UK on 6 December. Meanwhile, December marks two huge events (apart from the big day).
#PRETTY BABY MOVIE 1950 TV#
She has been working regularly in TV – notably as the fabulously flirtatious grandmother in the Netflix sitcom One Day at a Time. Yet she has spent much of her career battling typecasting or simply not being cast at all. She is one of only six women to have bagged the Egot (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony awards), alongside Helen Hayes, Audrey Hepburn, Barbra Streisand, Whoopi Goldberg and Liza Minnelli. Isn’t it exciting?” Moreno is one of the acting greats. Listen to her and you would knock off another 50.Ĭan I wish you an advance happy birthday, I ask. Moreno is a couple of weeks short of her 90th birthday, but look at her and you would knock off 20 years.
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“Well, here I am in my full glory,” she says from her home in Berkeley, California. R ita Moreno pops up on my computer screen in a bright red hat, huge pendant necklace and tortoiseshell glasses.