“Smell the roses. Smell the coffee. Whatever it is that makes you happy.”
― Rita Moreno
“I am able to get up and dust myself off and keep moving forward. I’m very stubborn.”
― Rita Moreno
“I live in the moment. The moment is the most important thing. That’s my entire philosophy: Make the best of the good moments.”
― Rita Moreno
“Arrogance – I have very little tolerance for that.”
― Rita Moreno
“There are some fabulous treasures of photos of me during the early days of my career; there are these pin-up photos that make me laugh: I look like the poor man’s Maria Montez. But there are some I look at, and I didn’t realize how sexy I looked back then.”
― Rita Moreno
“I was always typecast as a Latina.”
― Rita Moreno
“I’m one of the happiest people I know. I truly am. And it’s genuine.”
― Rita Moreno
“I think it’s important to be reminded that that’s what this country is comprised of – people from other countries.”
― Rita Moreno
“I’m trying as hard as I can to keep pushing the boundaries of what a woman is capable of doing. And it turns out there’s a lot we can do. There’s a lot we can speak about.”
― Rita Moreno
“I – my experience was really no different from any other immigrant that came to this country. It was rough.”
― Rita Moreno
“I am the happiest Hispanic I’ve ever met. Truly.”
― Rita Moreno
“Beyonce moves a lot. She’s astonishing, dances and sings at the same time. She is buff.”
― Rita Moreno
“This is my idea of heaven, coming home and watching the news.”
― Rita Moreno
“I love performing for kids, but you can’t play down to them, of course. Then it would be ‘Captain Kangaroo.’”
― Rita Moreno
“I’ve been neurotic in my life; I’ve had neurotic relationships with men. What else is new? But you really have to learn to be resilient – able to bounce back, pick yourself up, and just keep moving.”
― Rita Moreno
“I call myself the hardware shelf. There’s a lot of awards and honors there. And I have earned that. I didn’t ask for it, I didn’t beg for it, I didn’t pay for it. I earned that. People see the accomplishments – but it’s good to remind people that so much strife and labor and tears and heartbreak came before that, that it really is earned.”
― Rita Moreno
“Being in service and being involved in something that is greater than you is what makes a person complete and whole. The very first thing I ever did in terms of activism was for an anti-atom bomb rally.”
― Rita Moreno
“No one’s going to tell me how to make my own choices. For too many years, everybody told me what to say and what to do and how to be.”
― Rita Moreno
“People say that when you get to a certain age that you start to mellow. I have no idea what these people are talking about.”
― Rita Moreno
“I was born in Puerto Rico – I used to sit in the sun until I looked like a piece of bacon. It’s a wonder now that I don’t look like an old wallet. I’m a very fortunate person.”
― Rita Moreno
“The thing I get the most that I really love is that people don’t so much mention films I’ve been in or shows I’ve been in as they say, instead, ‘I love you. I just love your perseverance.’ That really pleases me.”
― Rita Moreno
“My mother’s feeling about men in general were always a bit of a mystery to me. She had difficulties in Puerto Rico with the men in her life. Her brothers abused her. It’s very easy to be judgmental, but more often than not, there are mitigating circumstances, and children are not usually aware of those.”
― Rita Moreno
“A friend of my mother’s, Irene Lopez, was a Spanish dancer. She saw me bopping around the room and said to my mother, ‘Rosita might have talent. Can I take her to my dance teacher?’ There was no thought of a career at that time, but I knew I loved the attention, and that’s so much a part of being a performer.”
― Rita Moreno
“I am not exactly Mrs. Good Housekeeping, although I love to cook, bake, even iron, but only because it’s not mandatory.”
― Rita Moreno
“I can’t dwell on past mistakes.”
― Rita Moreno
“I think lying is a bad idea. Sooner or later, someone’s going to catch you.”
― Rita Moreno
“All my life, I faced sexism and racism and then, when I hit 40, ageism.”
― Rita Moreno
“Mellowing has never done much for me. You need to keep moving.”
― Rita Moreno
“If I get a hangnail, I don’t dare complain! Life is good. I wake up humming.”
― Rita Moreno
“I’m a person who perseveres. You know, you fall down, you get up.”
― Rita Moreno
“I write with my left hand even though I’m right-handed, I walk backwards in a very safe place – anything that engages your brain.”
― Rita Moreno
“When I was nominated for the Oscar, I was absolutely positive that Judy Garland would win for ‘Judgment at Nuremberg,’ and then they call my name, and I was absolutely paralyzed. And I remember walking down to the stage and saying to myself, ‘Don’t run. It’s not dignified.’”
― Rita Moreno
“The reason there weren’t any, I am surmising, is that a lot of Latin kids, Latino kids, in those days didn’t have the money to take those kind of classes.”
― Rita Moreno
“They made me use an accent, which I wasn’t thrilled about because a lot of us, obviously, don’t have them.”
― Rita Moreno
“When was the last time you saw a musical about people at war with each other?”
― Rita Moreno
“Then there’s the story of ill-fated love. It’s universal.”
― Rita Moreno
“Bigger than life is not difficult for me. I am bigger than life.”
― Rita Moreno
“When I was in my teens and into my early 20s, I had acne. I used to get those big purple jobs, but not a lot of them, thank goodness, because you really couldn’t see them in the films that I did.”
― Rita Moreno
“I’m so damn lucky to still be here at 85. If I get a hangnail, I don’t dare complain! Life is good. I wake up humming.”
― Rita Moreno
“I have stamina, and I have energy.”
― Rita Moreno
“I was dancing for my grandpa from the time I was 4 or 5 years old in Puerto Rico.”
― Rita Moreno
“When I was girl, you could still get certain jobs if you didn’t have a diploma.”
― Rita Moreno
“It’s kind of heartbreaking when I talk about it now, I still get very moved by the lack of opportunities that were available to myself and to the very few others who were Hispanic young actresses.”
― Rita Moreno
“What musical performers bring to straight characterizations is that physical flexibility that comes with knowing your body so well. A lot of actors are terribly awkward. Terribly. And I think it’s so important for them, when they’re young, to work on their physical selves.”
― Rita Moreno
“My voice has many dynamics in it. Like my little body.”
― Rita Moreno
“If you can find a way your character moves, you know more about your character than you’d ever dream.”
― Rita Moreno
“I get embarrassed when I go to an actor or actress’s home and it’s filled with pictures of them.”
― Rita Moreno
“My video has a lot to do with the inside of a woman. Usually, exercise videos refer to exteriors only. They never talk to a woman where she lives – in her heart and soul. I do that at the beginning and end of mine.”
― Rita Moreno
“I’m an afternoon tea maven. I can tell you who has the best tea in every country.”
― Rita Moreno
“I knew what my scripts would say before I opened them: ‘Enter Conchita.’ I played handmaidens, Indian squaws, and Mexican dancers.”
― Rita Moreno
“I was a Spanish dancer. I don’t mean to put that down, because that was great, too, but nothing like the kind of dancing you had to do in ‘West Side Story,’ which was called jazz.”
― Rita Moreno
“Most people don’t know that dancing auditions, you learn the steps right now.”
― Rita Moreno
“You can’t, or you shouldn’t, be nominated for an Oscar unless you’ve turned in a performance that’s special.”
― Rita Moreno
“Is there a grandmother that isn’t spunky on television? Is there such a creature?”
― Rita Moreno
“I grew up as a child who felt she was very inferior to everyone else.”
― Rita Moreno
“I never had an easy time making friends in the past, for many reasons. I didn’t go into therapy for nothing.”
― Rita Moreno
“I’ve always had this image of this strong, sprightly person who is undaunted by anything; on the contrary, I was one of the shyest, most unsure people you ever met in your life. But I have one very specific quality: I’m plucky. I really am. I would say that’s a perfect description of my personality.”
― Rita Moreno
“I am a very positive and optimistic person.”
― Rita Moreno
“If you saw me in ‘The King and I,’ I had that angelic, virginal face.”
― Rita Moreno
“’America’ took at least five days of actual filming.”
― Rita Moreno
“’Revolutionary Road’ with Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet absolutely destroys me. They were both so wonderful in it.”
― Rita Moreno
“I sing Broadway stuff in the shower, mostly.”
― Rita Moreno
“Doing ‘The Electric Company’ was the most fun ever.”
― Rita Moreno
“You can never fight for a part or can’t beg them to do another audition. You can try, but that rarely works.”
― Rita Moreno
“Actors very often are people who think it’s always about ‘me,’ and I can see why! No one else is going to support you or say, ‘Gosh, I’m sorry about that,’ or, ‘Here, let me give you a job.’ It doesn’t happen that way. You can see why performers get very self-absorbed.”
― Rita Moreno
“I feel like I could go on forever.”
― Rita Moreno
“My best work happened on the stage.”
― Rita Moreno
“I was never offered enough, and that’s the truth.”
― Rita Moreno
“You’ve got to make a decision when you write about your life, and I decided I was going to be honest, and some of those things will be embarrassing.”
― Rita Moreno
“I auditioned for ‘West Side Story’ just like everybody else, and I nearly had a heart attack, because I hadn’t danced in about – oh, I don’t know, about 15 years.”
― Rita Moreno
“Being the house ethnic was destroying my life and my sense of myself, because I had been consigned to play every dusky maiden you have ever seen in your life in movies.”
― Rita Moreno
“I have played Polynesian. I have played an Arabian girl. I played an East Indian girl. And what was so confusing about that, which I mention in my book, is that I assumed I had to have an accent. Nobody said anything, so I made up what I call the universal ethnic accent, and they all sounded alike. It didn’t matter who I was playing.”
― Rita Moreno
“Doing ‘Life Without Makeup’ onstage is what inspired me to do a book in the first place.”
― Rita Moreno
“I just love details; I love trying to make the reader smell what I was smelling at the time and see what I was seeing. Textures, too – all that kind of stuff is probably my strong suit as far as my writing goes, I would say.”
― Rita Moreno
“I think Mike Nichols is brilliant, but I think Jerry Robbins was a genius.”
― Rita Moreno
“I watch ‘Singin’ in the Rain’ at least once a year with my grandchildren, and they just adore it.”
― Rita Moreno
“When you engage your brain, it just keeps getting fatter and richer and wonderful.”
― Rita Moreno
“Elvis was a sweet darling, shy fellow, but he was really boring.”
― Rita Moreno
“The wonderful thing about cabaret is, you can do a lot of things you can’t do in a concert. You can’t do smoky ballads for 50 minutes in a concert. It’s a different animal.”
― Rita Moreno
“I am a woman of the moment.”
― Rita Moreno
“Elvis was really sweet and kind of bashful, but he didn’t have a whole lot to say.”
― Rita Moreno
“If you’re going to write about your life, you must write about your life.”
― Rita Moreno
“I was brought up on animal grease.”
― Rita Moreno
“Women over 30 are usually somebody’s mother in a ‘Porky’s’ movie, being silly and being ridiculed. There’s just not a whole lot for them to do. It’s just coffee-pouring on a bigger scale.”
― Rita Moreno
“I make a lot of soups and stews at home, and I always have fresh bread with it.”
― Rita Moreno
“My husband and I were very different: I’m spontaneous and emotional; I’m loud – he was exactly the opposite. But you need to be flexible.”
― Rita Moreno
“The part of my personality that most irritated my husband, some of our big, big disagreements were when I got what he called ‘showbiz.’ He meant flamboyant or raucous.”
― Rita Moreno
“It’s not easy having a partnership in this business.”
― Rita Moreno
“I made a lot of mistakes.”
― Rita Moreno
“I’m a raucous Puerto Rican!”
― Rita Moreno
“My idol when I was a kid was Elizabeth Taylor.”
― Rita Moreno
“I had no role models from my own community – there was no such thing. Earlier on, there were people like Dolores Del Rio, but I was too young for that – that was before me. There was really nobody out there.”
― Rita Moreno
“If you’re in a business where Latinos only play Indian maidens and what I call ‘Conchita Lolita’ parts – the little fiery spitfires – you do what you have to do.”
― Rita Moreno
“I think Jennifer Lopez is a phenom. And as far as I’m concerned, she’s really a very smart businesswoman.”
― Rita Moreno
“My first American experience was in the harbor of New York City when I saw that amazing big, tall lady. I remember thinking, ‘Oh my goodness, a lady runs this country.’”
― Rita Moreno
“You talk about meant to be – oh my goodness, I have never done anything else in my life except be a performer.”
― Rita Moreno
“Actually, my true name is Rosa Dolores Alverio. And then I became Rosita Moreno when a stepfather stepped in. And when I got to MGM studios, which was my first film contract, they just thought that Rosita wasn’t a good name, and they changed it to Rita. And yes, it was their idea.”
― Rita Moreno
“Maybe Elvis was inhibited by inbred religious prohibitions or an Oedipal complex, or maybe he simply preferred the thrill of a denied release. Whatever put the brakes on the famous pelvis, it ground to a halt at a certain point, and that was it.”
― Rita Moreno
“I was the artsy one, and my husband took care of all our finances. It was the Latino way – the man is in charge of the money.”
― Rita Moreno
“You see a script, and you say, ‘Oh, I can play the heck out of that,’ talk to your agent, and he says they don’t want to see you. That’s heartbreaking.”
― Rita Moreno
“You can wish to have an Oscar someday or some other award, but Life Achievement? You don’t see yourself that way.”
― Rita Moreno
“I was not treated like a serious young actress, and that was very hard. It sent me into psychotherapy, which is one of the smartest things I ever did. It taught me that I had to find value in myself.”
― Rita Moreno
“Any character who had dark skin, I got all those parts. I could play a Polynesian, East Indian princess, whatever.”
― Rita Moreno
“When I was a little girl, there was no Variety Latino. When I was a little girl, there was no nothing. There were very few roles for people like myself.”
― Rita Moreno
“I first became aware of Gina Rodriguez when she was just starting out starring on ‘Jane the Virgin,’ and a friend sent me an article in which she mentioned me.”
― Rita Moreno
“I had a very poor image of myself because I believed too much of the people around me when I was very young.”
― Rita Moreno
“I don’t want to miss out on my grandchildren and my daughter, and doing Broadway would do just that.”
― Rita Moreno
“I’m proud of me.”
― Rita Moreno
“I figure if I keep my spirit in shape, the bones will take care of themselves.”
― Rita Moreno
“I’m one of those performers who has done just about everything except juggle, and I’m working on that.”
― Rita Moreno
“I’m not afraid of color. I like color.”
― Rita Moreno
“I started dancing almost before I could walk.”
― Rita Moreno
“My grandkids are everything to me. For me, family is all!”
― Rita Moreno
“I should be a representative for AARP!”
― Rita Moreno
“Maybe it’s my age, but I know I look good, so I’m not going to look like another person suddenly because I don’t have makeup on – same hair, same person.”
― Rita Moreno
“The one thing I really learned, and learned well, in group therapy was that you don’t die if someone doesn’t like you.”
― Rita Moreno
“I’ve always believed that I had talent, even when I felt like a very inferior sort of person, which I spent a lot of time living my life feeling that I wasn’t worthy.”
― Rita Moreno
“Oh, I think Scarlett Johansson is a terrific actress. I think she’s just marvelous.”
― Rita Moreno
“Actors very often are people who think it’s always about ‘me,’ and I can see why! No one else is going to support you or say, ‘Gosh, I’m sorry about that,’ or, ‘Here, let me give you a job.’ It doesn’t happen that way.”
― Rita Moreno
“Let’s face it. How often do you see an Asian face in films and television? They are practically invisible. Now and then, you will get one, and, interestingly, he gets the role of a scientist. Isn’t that interesting?”
― Rita Moreno
“Lupe Velez was way before me; Dolores Del Rio was way before me, so I had no one. So the only one I could think of that I identified with was this gorgeous creature named Elizabeth Taylor, so she became my role model.”
― Rita Moreno
“I wore so much rubber when I was at MGM, I bumped into the wall once, and I ricocheted.”
― Rita Moreno
“I was determined that with perseverance and faith, at some point, someone would say, ‘This girl has talent,’ and would cast me in something meaningful.”
― Rita Moreno
“Certain roles for older women are aimed at certain older actresses – I’m not one of those. I’ve been offered any number of Puerto Rican grandmas that I’ve turned down.”
― Rita Moreno
“I love being onstage, I love getting applause, and I love the love that comes across the footlights. It’s so much a part of what I do and what I’ve done most of my life.”
― Rita Moreno
“I played a Siamese girl from Thailand. I played an Arabian girl. I did a lot of American Indians. I never, ever was able to do a part without assuming some kind of accent.”
― Rita Moreno
“There is something about sex that always brings out the funny in me. I think it’s because we make such fools of ourselves over it.”
― Rita Moreno
“’LIFE Magazine’ decided to do a story about a young actress in Hollywood in 1954. And I made the cover. And I remember that the fellow who was doing the story on me said, ‘Listen, kid, I just want you to know, if Eisenhower gets a cold, you’re off the cover.’”
― Rita Moreno
“I loved being in the film called ‘Carnal Knowledge’ – the one with Jack Nicholson, which was very dark but a really brilliant movie. I loved being in ‘The Ritz.’ ‘The Ritz’ I think is just hilarious. I just saw it again recently and by God, it’s still funny!”
― Rita Moreno
“If you’re going to make black movies only about black people, that’s as bad as white movies only about white people.”
― Rita Moreno
“A lot of young Latino actors have said to me, ‘Why can’t we get an Oscar? Why can’t we be nominated?’ And the terrible truth is that if you don’t get the right parts, you’re not going to be. Are you going to get an Oscar nomination for one of those Judd Apatow movies? Not likely, no matter what nationality you are.”
― Rita Moreno
“I love Hallmark movies because they make movies that you don’t see anymore… and at a time when there is so much evil in the world, it’s kind of nice to be able to retreat to something like a Hallmark Movies and Mysteries.”
― Rita Moreno
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