HOLLYWOOD star Rosario Dawson, 33, is the new woman in the life of film
director Danny Boyle, hailed for his visionary opening ceremony at the
London 2012 Olympics.
Rosario, co-starring with Bruce Willis in the gritty new suspense thriller
Fire With Fire, is also known for her non-stop charity work, particularly
for Aids and victims of domestic violence.
She reveals how her unusual mother inspired her.
“My mom Isabel was pregnant with me when she was just 16, and she taught me not
to get pregnant when I was young.
She raised me talking to me about sex, maybe a little too early. But she made
sure I had the choices she didn’t have. I wanted to go travelling and wanted
to do this and that.
So I have avoided getting pregnant, and marriage. I am not against either. But
my mom did not marry my biological dad, who I’ve never even met. She married
Greg (Dawson) when I was a baby and I regarded him as my real dad.
They had my brother, Clay, who is four years younger.
I was brought up in a rat-infested squat on the Lower East Side in New York.
I have asked since: “What in the world made them move two children into an
abandoned building with no heat, no water and no electricity?”
The reason was that they could build their home around us, which was not
something you could easily do in New York.
My mom learned how to do plumbing and they put in sewage lines. My dad learned
how to do electrics and we had light. They also learned construction and
replaced the slanted floors with a proper floor and put in windows.
Suddenly, we had a home.
We were very loving and close and it was a fun way of growing up. It also gave
me an awareness of life and death.
I knew about the risk of Aids, for example, from the age of about six. I am of
the generation that grew up with Aids — just as the next generation had
iPods and all they know is high-speed internet.
My mom was of the previous generation where if you had unprotected sex you
could get pregnant. For me, unprotected sex could kill you.
I was in High School watching all these kids having unprotected sex and
getting pregnant, with their reaction: “It’s totally fine — whatever.” My
first film, Kids, when I was 15, was all about that very subject. I was
hired for my looks (she is of Puerto Rican and Afro-Cuban descent) by
director Larry Clark, who saw me outside our apartment.
There was also a strong theme about the risk of Aids in the film of the stage
show Rent, when I played a character who was 18, HIV positive and addicted
to heroin.
I am lucky, thanks to many warnings from my mom, that I avoided the dangers
and just played it out in films!
I have not been shy of playing stronger women roles. Women are sexual and the
characters that I have played are sexual.
I am not ashamed to do that. In Sin City, I played Gail who wears just tiny
strips of leather, carries handcuffs and wears a mohawk hairstyle. I even
had my hair cut for that.
My mom had shaved her hair into a mohawk at one point and shaved her head
completely when she was 40 so I didn’t have hang-ups.
As for the film Alexander, which was trashed by the critics, I had this
bedroom scene with Colin Farrell that people seem to remember. Sienna Miller
told me that in London she read a review that said the only two good things
in the film were my left breast and right breast.
I never had a burning desire to become an actress and timing has been very
important.
Hollywood does not change and it never will for any reason other than money.
No one is handing anything to Latinas, it’s just the population is changing
in America and they want to see characters on screen with whom they can
identify. That demand has given me opportunities. I love that, in acting,
life is so unpredictable. I had started dating Jason Lewis (who played
Smith Jerrod in TV series Sex And The City) before actually watching him
in the show.
When I did watch it, I was surprised at how naked he was — and how often he
had to be naked. I was watching with my mom, going: “Oh my gosh. Yes, that’s
my boyfriend.” My mom, of course, was not in the least shocked.
She taught me to care about issues and people.
She would volunteer to work in crisis centres for women who had been beaten
and abused. She also helped in a place called Housing Works, which was an
organisation providing housing for families and homeless people living with
Aids.
I would help her clear out houses in which people had died so we could bring
in someone else to live in reasonable comfort.
My mom inspired me to think and work for other people.”