The attractive Rosario Dawson is a blend of several ethnic flavors: Puerto Rican, African, Cuban, Irish, and Native American!



And these flavors have been blended together in that ultimate melting pot, New York! Rosario Dawson was born May 9, 1979 in this city, and raised in difficult conditions. Her mother Isabel, of Puerto-Rican and Afro-Cuban descent, was only 16 when she became pregnant with Rosario. Greg Dawson, of Native American and Irish descent, made his living as a construction worker while Isabel found work as a plumber, even though she was a trained vocalist.


Luckily for Rosario Dawson, she was discovered for her first film Kids, on the front porch of her building at age 15. Rosario never had plans of becoming an actress, but because of her hard childhood she learned to grasp whatever opportunity came her way. Kids came out in 1995 and from then on Rosario appeared in bit roles in several other films. She also worked on her acting skills by joining the Lee Strasberg Institute in Manhattan.


Great things were expected of her 2001 movie Josie and the Pussycats which eventually bombed, but Rosario was noticed in this film. Dawson again had a small role in the 2002 movie Men in Black II.


In 2002 she starred opposite Ed Norton in the Spike Lee film 25th Hour. The next year Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson and Seann William Scott brought out a box-office smash Rundown, which had Rosario Dawson in the role of a Brazilian revolutionary.


Race has been an issue in Rosario getting (or not getting) some roles. In 2004 when Oliver Stone was looking for an actress to play Roxanne, Alexander's Persian wife, Rosario and her agent really pushed to get that role. But when the movie came out Rosario Dawson recalls: "When I got the role of Roxane in Alexander, some people got really upset, like, 'Why did they hire a black girl?' Meanwhile, my friend who is Afghani said, 'You look just like my family, so I don't understand what people are so upset about.'"


Rosario Dawson then has the problem of perception as other Hollywood stars. Jessica Marie Alba is classed as Latina even though she also has French and Danish blood, Alexis Bledel is regarded as white because of her light eyes and light skin, even though she also has Latina blood and spoke Spanish from childhood. Wonder what race label Hollywood puts on Moon Bloodgood? She has Dutch, Irish, Native American, and Korean blood!


Rosario Dawson has something more in common with Jessica Alba and Alexis Bledel; the three actresses appeared together in the 2005 movie Sin City, where Rosario played the role of a dominatrix prostitute. That same year came the movie Rent, which dealt with issues of homelessness, poverty, and HIV, all of which was so similar to Rosario's own childhood. "When I was growing up, my mom worked at Housing Works, fixing up apartments that would get rented out to AIDS-affected families," Dawson recalls.


In 2007 Rosario Dawson was in Quentin Tarantino's Grindhouse: Death Proof. By this time she was established enough, and rich enough, to get into movie production with Descent.




Race has never been an issue in Rosario Dawson's personal relationships. She has dated Joshua Jackson of Dawson's Creek, has lived with Sex and the City star Jason Lewis in LA, and is now seeing Los Angeles-based DJ Mathieu Schreyer. And rumor has it that the two lovebirds may now be engaged.


Charity work with girls and young women is close to Rosario Dawson's heart, because of her own experiences while growing up. She's been involved with the Lower Eastside Club of New York, where her aunt also works, trying to raise money and awareness for them. Dawson knows how lucky she was to be discovered and propelled into movies; getting out of her life of dreary poverty and suffering. She looks at her work with this girls club as a way of giving these girls as many choices as they could get in life.


Rosario Dawson participated in the Vagina Monologues recently at New Orleans, celebrating V-Day’s 10 years of ending violence against women and girls and to honor the women of New Orleans and the Gulf South. “I think it’s really important to show what people never want to talk about, that there are tremendous atrocities happening in our own backyard,” Rosario told OK! Magazine of the significance of the event. “In three years, so many people forget about what happened [with Hurricane Katrina]."


Rosario will be seen next in Killshot, Eagle Eye, and Sin City 2. One interesting experiment by NBC has Rosario Dawson starring in Gemini, a sci-fi thriller exclusively for Web TV, described as interactive and part-animated!