Rosie Perez says she fired her agent after they advised her to dye her hair blond and get a nose job to land more roles: 'I couldn't believe it'
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- Rosie Perez said her first agent encouraged her to change her appearance to look more Caucasian.
- She told Variety: "I couldn't believe it. I was like, 'Oh, my goodness. Like, thank you, fired.'"
- The Afro-Latino actor found a new agent who helped land her a role written for a white woman.
Rosie Perez has said that her former agent encouraged her to change her appearance to make her look more Caucasian in order to land more roles early in her career.
In a Variety cover story, the "Your Honor" actor said that her first agent — whom she secured after her breakout role in Spike Lee's "Do the Right Thing" (1989) — told her that if she went under the knife for rhinoplasty and dyed her dark hair, she would be able to put Perez forward for more auditions.
"I don't want her to be canceled, but she told me that if I dyed my hair blond and got a nose job, 'I can get you more jobs, because you're not Black,'" Perez said.
"I couldn't believe it. I was like, 'Oh, my goodness. Like, thank you, fired.'"
Perez, who identifies as Afro-Latino, declined to name the agent in question.
The actor went on to say that soon after parting ways with her agent, the reality of her decision set in and she realized, "I had nobody. I had no money."
However, Perez said in the wake of her decision, she found an ally in her "Criminal Justice" costar Jennifer Grey, who upon hearing about the agent's advice, instantly called her own agent.
"Jennifer and I clicked instantly," the actor said. "I haven't seen that woman in ages, but I just think she's phenomenal. She's like, 'I cannot believe how racist this industry is.' She picks up the phone and calls Jane Berliner at CAA and says, 'You need to represent this actress.'"
Berliner signed Perez and, as Variety noted, helped the actor book her next major role as Woody Harrelson's girlfriend in "White Men Can't Jump" (1992), a part that was written for a white woman.
Elsewhere in the interview, Perez, who scored an Emmy nomination for her turn in "The Flight Attendant" last year, spoke about the dearth of Latino representation in Hollywood.
"A few of us have come through, and I'm very grateful for that," she said. "But it's just not enough. And when we do get our stories told, we have some executive who knows nothing about who we are as a people. And then they're like, 'Can you spice it up a little bit?'
"You want to punch these people in the face. And then if it's too real, they're, 'Could you pull it back, 'cause we don't want the audience to feel offended.'"
Earlier this week, "The Daily Show" guest host John Leguizamo, who is also vocal about the long-standing issue of Latino underrepresentation, spoke about the phenomenon of white actors being cast in Latino roles.
He then joked that in response, he wants to take a role from a white actor by playing Gwyneth Paltrow in a TV series about her ongoing ski-accident trial.