Rosie Perez's 10 Best Roles, Ranked (According To Rotten Tomatoes)
Rosie Perez has been working in the business for decades, both as an actor as well as a choreographer, including on the series In Living Color in the early 90s. In addition to acting in both movies and on Broadway, she was also the co-host of the daytime talk show The View for one season.
Perez rose to fame following her role as Tina in Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing. She has been nominated for an Academy Award and three Emmys, the latter for her choreography work on In Living Color. From her start at the age of 19 as a dancer on Soul Train to doing choreography for artists like Janet Jackson, Bobby Brown, and LL Cool J, Perez has had an interesting career. But which have been her best acting roles to date?
10 It Could Happen To You (1994) – 71%
Nicolas Cage and Bridget Fonda were the stars of this romantic comedy-drama that was inspired by the real-life story of a police officer who won the lottery and split his winnings with a waitress.
Perez was billed third behind the two stars, playing Muriel Lang, the wife of Cage's character, NYPD office Charlie Lang. While Charlie was kind, generous, and thoughtful, Muriel was greedy, materialistic, and selfish.
9 Night On Earth (1992) – 75%
Dubbed an art-comedy drama, this movie is actually a collection of five vignettes, each focusing on the bond between a taxi driver and passengers in five different cities, including Los Angeles, New York, Paris, Rome, and Helsinki.
Perez is part of the story that takes place in New York when an East German immigrant taxi driver and former clown picks up a streetwise young man named YoYo (played by Giancarlo Esposito). Perez plays YoYo's sister-in-law Angela, who is spotted along the route and picked up to be taken home.
8 White Men Can't Jump (1992) – 76%
Arguably Perez's most well-known role, this sports comedy-drama is about two streetball hustlers, played by Wesley Snipes and Woody Harrelson. Billy, Harrelson's character, is a former college basketball player who hustles others who assume he can't play well because he's white.
Perez plays Billy's live-in girlfriend Gloria, who has racked up a sizeable gambling debt and is on the run from mobsters. She also has an interesting appetite for facts, reading and learning about anything and everything in hopes that one day she might make it on Jeopardy! and win big.
7 Birds Of Prey (And The Fantabulous Emancipation Of One Harley Quinn) (2020) – 78%
Perez's most recent and most high-profile movie, she managed to snag a role in Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn), the eighth installment within the DC Extended Universe. It focuses on the story of Harley Quinn, the Joker's ex-girlfriend, and her plan to form the Birds of Prey and save Cassandra Cain.
Renee Montoya is the name of Perez's character, a detective working with the Gotham City Police Department (GCPD) who is trying to build a case against the crime lord Roman Sionis/Black Mask. However, she has her own demons, including fighting with alcoholism.
6 Fearless (1993) – 85%
Perez stars alongside Jeff Bridges, Isabella Rossellini, and John Turturro in this drama, which earned her an Academy Award nomination for her role as Carla Rodrigo, a woman struggling with survivor's guilt after losing her infant child in a tragic plane crash that saw the death of most of the passengers.
The movie, inspired by both the 1989 United States Airlines Flight 232 crash in Iowa and the writer Rafael Yglesias' own car accident, was a huge box office success.
5 The Take (2007) – 85%
After an armored truck driver survives an attack, he becomes laser-focused on finding and taking down his attackers. The truck driver Felix is played by John Leguizamo and Perez plays his wife, Marina.
The star-studded cast also includes Tyrese Gibson as Adell Baldwin - the man who hijacked Felix's truck and shot him in the head, causing him to lose his memory, and Bobby Cannavale as FBI agent Steve Perelli.
4 Inside The Rain (2019) – 86%
This romantic comedy-drama, marking the directorial debut for Aaron Fisher, is semi-autobiographical, telling the story of a bipolar film student who tries to make it through life while dealing with a variety of challenges, most notably his drastic mood swings and addiction to Adderal.
The film received mixed reviews but still manages to rank high when it comes to Rotten Tomatoes. Perez, considered the only professional actor in the movie, plays Dr. Holloway, a psychiatrist.
3 Do The Right Thing (1989) – 93%
Spike Lee wrote, produced, and directed this movie about racial tensions in Brooklyn that lead up to one tragic and violent event. One of Perez's most high-profile films, she rose to fame after playing Tina, the girlfriend of lead character Mookie, who was played by Lee himself.
The film, which also starred big wigs like Danny Aiello, Giancarlo Esposito, John Turturro, Samuel L. Jackson, and Martin Lawrence (in his feature film debut), received several Academy Award nominations and is often considered one of the greatest movies of all time, as well as one of the best movies with a Black director.
2 The Flight Attendant (2020) – 98%
Perez's most recent role, this drama, based on the 2018 novel of the same name by Chris Bohjalian, stars The Big Bang Theory's Kaley Cuoco as Cassie, a flight attendant who wakes up hungover in Thailand, the man she enjoyed a night of passion with dead next to her in bed.
Perez plays Cassie's co-worker Megan, who yearns to be young and free-spirited like Cassie, and so lives vicariously through the woman she deems her "best friend." But Megan, it seems, also has a few secrets of her own. The series, a surprise hit for HBO, stars a number of other familiar faces.
1 A Brother's Kiss (1997) – 100%
With a perfect rating, it doesn't get much better than this independent drama for Perez. Based on the 1988 Seth Zvi Rosenfeld play and marking his directorial debut, it's about two brothers who grow up in a troubled household and face a traumatic experience with a police officer that follows them to adulthood.
Perez plays Debbie, the girlfriend of the older brother Lex who is both stuck in a combative relationship and a dead-end job driving a bus. Perez was actually married to Rosenfeld from 1998 to 2001.