Name: Rita Moreno on Stardom and Self-Acceptance I Explains It All I Harper’s BAZAAR
Uploaded: 2021-12-10T14:16:51.000Z
Duration: 8 min 36 s
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Adverbs of frequency

the best advice that I ever got when I was starting out, never give up and I never did.

Hello, I'm Rita Moreno and I'm here to explain it hauls.

I was a natural performer when I was four and five years old.

My grandpa in Puerto rico would turn on the record player and I would dance for him and when I realized how much I amused him and how much he loved to watch me.

You know, sometimes you're wired a certain way and I was wired to perform.

I think that I found myself as it were my true self only as I started to participate in psychotherapy and I was there with the idea and the objective of being a more complete person.

I knew I wasn't and I knew that I wasn't as a result of the racial bias that I experienced as a young girl and in Hollywood for that matter, I understood that I didn't have much value and that I didn't have much value because I was an outlier from another country.

So it took me a long time to get to the stage of my life where I could say I do have value.

It takes a long while when you have been indoctrinated at a very young age to feel otherwise about yourself.

All of this attempted evolution in my life did take place interestingly enough during and after West Side story because in West Side story interestingly enough, I was playing a young woman who respected herself, A young woman who had a sense of dignity and she, curiously, and perversely Anita became my role model at a very late stage in my life because I never had a role model, I mean in my time, what was, what was that a mentor?

Yes, you could have, so I chose Elizabeth taylor at the time, but mentors didn't even exist for someone like myself.

Yeah, what is really rewarding and to some extent always surprises me is that I became a role model for many hispanic young women, but I have to tell you that when you're in the position at that time of not yet really being a star, you don't set out to be anybody's icon, you just want to work as an actress is a big, big, big, big difference.

But you know, now when I look at the documentary on my life, I say, oh my goodness, oh God, really thank you, I'm thrilled and delighted, but and it's not because I'm being deliberately humble, it's just that I never saw myself that way and uh it sure is a joy, I can now see my life in retrospect and I see it way way more clearly than I ever did.

If I were to be asked what I would advise young people, young people who wanted to pursue a career and I'm not just speaking of show business, I would say, don't let anyone ever mess with your image of what you want in life.

You have a profound and righteous right to ask for everything that you want in this world.

As long as you're willing to work for it.

Don't let anyone tell you what they think is right for you, if this is what you want to do, if you want to be in show business, let's say, then work at it.

Here's the thing that always bothers me about younger people.

And I always ask young people will, does that mean that you're willing to sacrifice much in your life in order to pay for dance classes or acting classes and maybe doing side jobs so that you can become a good actor or actress or dancer or singer.

It happens once in a while, but it rarely happens.

Of course, if you have extraordinarily big breasts, that's helpful, but I didn't.

And I don't and I managed That made me laugh.

Let me tell you something about the other side of myself that has absolutely nothing to do with being confident and being proud of yourself.

I call her Little Rosetta and she's a little girl Who's a brat who lives in me.

She will never go away obviously because I still can't get rid of her and I'm about to be 90.

So little Rosetta is the bad side of Rita.

She's the one who says things to me in my head.

The measure to me of maturity for me is to have the ability as I do now, to say to this nasty little girl, go to your room and make her stop saying those things that discourage me and make me feel bad about myself.

But she is there still, you know, you can be psychoanalyzed till you're blue in the face.

But sometimes I think if you're wounded enough, those sides of you stay with you forever, you have to learn to re learn to love yourself all the time.

I absolutely adored watching my documentary.

All the things that people have complimented me about came to fruition.

I have a great sense of humor and I have a lot of empathy in my heart for people.

What I'm really getting at, I guess is that I think I'm a swell person.

Do you know the kind of work it has taken for me to be able to say that without being embarrassed.

But yes, I do like myself and if I'm ever unhappy, I'm a person who's always talked to herself like my mother did, I mutter, I tell me jokes.

I tell myself jokes as I'm cooking or whatever.

And if they're funny enough, I will laugh out loud at them and I'll say read up, that was good.

I think the best part of being me right now And I guess I'm reaching milestones all over the place because I'm going to be 90 very soon is the very real notion that I'm still here.

I just finished a movie recently called The Prank.