Rita Moreno, the legendary actor who has won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar, and a Tony, has revealed that she did not always love being a Hispanic person.
In an interview with TODAY show host Hoda Kotb, Moreno said that she felt “unworthy and without value” as a Puerto Rican immigrant in New York.
"For many years, I didn’t like being a Hispanic person,” Moreno said. “It took a very long time to get over the feeling that I was an unworthy person, that I wasn’t pretty, or that I was a Latina."
Moreno, who is 92 years old, said that she faced discrimination and typecasting in Hollywood, and that it took her years of psychotherapy to overcome her insecurities. She shared more details about her challenges in her 2021 documentary “ Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go For It ."
Despite the obstacles, Moreno has had a remarkable career spanning seven decades, breaking barriers for Latino performers and earning numerous accolades. She is best known for her role as Anita in the 1961 movie “West Side Story,” for which she became the first Latina to win an Academy Award.
Moreno is currently promoting her new film, “The Prank,” a dark comedy in which she plays a mean physics teacher. She also confirmed that she will star in a horror film called “Theirs” with Harvey Keitel, Roselyn Sanchez and Udo Kier.
Moreno said that her secret to staying young at heart is laughter. “I love to laugh, and I love to make people laugh,” she said. “My problem is getting serious sometimes.”
