This is Fresh Air, I'm Terry Gross. My guest is the Emmy and Oscar-nominated actor, Rosie Perez.

She started her performing career as a dancer. When she was 19, she was dancing at a club with

her friends when a talent scout from Soul Train noticed her and invited her to dance on the show.

She brought her style of hip-hop dancing to Soul Train, at a time before hip-hop had entered the

mainstream. She went on to be the choreographer for the Fly Girls, the dancers on the sketch comedy

show In Living Color. She choreographed music videos for Bobby Brown, Diana Ross, and L. L. Cool J.

In 1988, when she was 24, Perez went to a nightclub and ended up getting in an argument with Spike

Lee. He told her, I've been looking for somebody who can yell at me in exactly that way,

and he cast her as his girlfriend and do the right thing. Despite the success of the movie,

Rosie Perez couldn't get an agent or a manager to take her seriously as an actress,

but she pushed on something she's done her whole life, and was cast in White Men Can't Jump,

and Peter Wears film Fearless, which earned her a best supporting actress nomination.

Perez had a rough childhood. She had nine siblings. Her mother was intermittently jailed

throughout her childhood and was diagnosed later in life as schizophrenic. When Perez was three

years old, she was transferred to a Catholic foster home run by Nons and was considered a ward of

the state of New York until age 12. Rosie Perez currently stars in the HBO Max series The Flight

Attendant, which is in its second season. Later this month, you can see her in the Apple TV

Plus series now and then as a police detective. Rosie Perez, welcome to Fresh Air. It is a pleasure

to have you on the show. It seems like things are going so well in your career now, like two new series.

Like do you feel it in a great place professionally now? Yes, I do. It's wonderful.

It's all about just keep pushing and keep going as you stated earlier. If you really want something,

you just have to keep at it. There's been highs, there's been lows, there's been mostly highs.

...