EGOT Actress Rita Moreno Talks Oscars, Racial Typecasting, and Getting a SAG Life Achievement Award

million dollar lady

Susana Polo

Published: Jan 17, 2014 05:44 pm

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Rita Moreno is the only person of Hispanic descent to win an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony. After playing a widely recognized role of Anita in West Side Story (one that gave her a much unexpected upset over Judy Garland in the 1961 Best Supporting Actress field), she swore she would never go back to playing the stereotypes reserved for Latina actresses in the 1960s’ Hollywood: gang girlfriends or barefoot seductresses in Westerns. Here, on the occasion of the Screen Actor’s Guild awarding her a Life Achievement award, she talks about how long it took Hollywood to get that message.

Fun fact: Rita Moreno’s first Emmy was Best Individual Performance in a Variety or Music Program, for her guest stint on The Muppet Show. You can read The Hollywood Reporter’s whole interview with her here.

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Author

Susana Polo

Susana Polo thought she'd get her Creative Writing degree from Oberlin, work a crap job, and fake it until she made it into comics. Instead she stumbled into a great job: founding and running this very website (she's Editor at Large now, very fancy). She's spoken at events like Geek Girl Con, New York Comic Con, and Comic Book City Con, wants to get a Batwoman tattoo and write a graphic novel, and one of her canine teeth is in backwards.