Sonia Sotomayor’s recent Supreme Court nomination will likely make her the first Latina on the bench in America’s highest court. In 1992, Sotomayor became the youngest judge in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York and the first Hispanic federal judge in New York state. With an academic career spanning the hallowed halls of America’s top universities—Princeton, Columbia, and NYU all claim her as theirs—Sonia still makes time to visit Puerto Rico once or twice a year, where she spends time with family and gives speeches. “Although I am an American, love my country and could achieve its opportunity of succeeding at anything I worked for, I also have a Latina soul and heart, with the magic that carries,” Sotomayor has said.
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The highest-paid Latino in Hollywood, Jennifer Lopez married fellow Puerto Rican-American Marc Anthony in 2004, taking the term “power couple” to new heights. Anthony is a Grammy award-winning singer and songwriter, an actor, and the biggest-selling salsa artist of all time, according to the Guinness Book of World Records. All that pales in comparison next to Lopez, whose career as an actress, musician, dancer, producer, and fashion designer propelled her from being just another triple-threat into superstardom. The couple gave birth to twins, Emme Maribel Muñiz and Maximilian "Max" David Muñiz in early 2008 and received $6 million from People magazine for the first photos of the family. Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt may have gotten a whopping $14 million for the pictures of their twins, but it’s still not bad for Jenny from the block.
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Rosario Dawson is no stranger to humble beginnings—in fact, they’re what got her started in show business. Dawson was born in New York City to a plumber and a construction worker who broke into a building on the Lower East Side, installed plumbing and electrical wiring and squatted there with their daughter. She was plucked from her front-porch step to appear in Kids, a controversial movie about at-risk youth in the ‘90s. Since then, Dawson has become almost as well-known for her box-office flops as for her mixed successes. ( Josie and the Pussycats? Anyone?) But look at how pretty she is! With looks like those, who needs Oscars?
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Ana Ortiz and Mark Indelicato play mother and son on ABC’s Ugly Betty, the sister and nephew of titular character Betty Suarez. Though they’re Queen-born Mexican-Americans on television, in real life they’re both Philadelphians of Puerto Rican descent.
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The unofficial voice of New York’s Puerto Rican community, Rosie Perez, is an Academy Award-nominated actress (and Fly Girl choreographer, mind you). An activist for Puerto Rican-Americans, Perez's film Yo Soy Boricua! Pa' Que Tú Lo Sepas! (I'm Puerto Rican, Just So You Know!) is about the fight for Puerto Rican rights. She’s taken part in Spanish PSAs for AIDS awareness, provides the voice of Click in Nick Jr.’s Go Diego Go!, and played Chel in DreamWorks’s The Road to El Dorado. Our favorite Perez role? The crookedly cute cop in stoner flick Pineapple Express.
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Both Freddie Prinzes have known their fair share of fame. Senior made a name for himself through stand-up comedy and his role in the TV show Chico and the Man; Junior rode the teeny-bopper movie wave for years longer than anyone should be allowed with lead roles in She’s All That, I Know What You Did Last Summer and Summer Catch—eventually making one of the stranger career moves in Hollywood when, in 2008, Junior started making appearances on televised WWE Smackdowns. Sadly, the two Freddie Prinze’s careers never coincided. Freddie Prinze Sr. fatally shot himself in the head in 1977 at age 22, when Freddie Prinze Jr. was 2.
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Scripted bad boy Benicio del Toro was born and raised in Santurce, Puerto Rico, where he was teased with the nickname “Skinny Benny”—you wouldn’t know it from the street-smart characters like Javier Rodriguez in the drug drama Traffic and Franky Four Fingers in the jewel-heist movie Snatch. In 2001, del Toro became the third Puerto Rican to win an Academy Award for his role in Traffic; the nomination also marked the first time two Puerto Ricans had been nominated for an Oscar in the same category. (Joaquin Phoenix’s role in Gladiator got a nod.) In 2004, del Toro was again nominated, this time for his role in 21 Grams.
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Life has imitated art for actress Michelle Rodriguez, who starred in Girl Fight in 2000, and then, um, beat up a girl in 2002. But she’s a family girl at heart: Rodriguez is the daughter of a Dominican mother and a Puerto Rican father, and moved to Puerto Rico when she was 8.
Tim Whitby
With a whole lot of rich and not a lot of rag, it’s hard to believe Oscar de la Renta’s Horatio Alger story—but the fashion czar has come a long way from his hometown of Santiago de los Caballeros in the Dominican Republic. He’s the son of a Dominican mother and a Puerto Rican father, and lived with his six siblings in Santo Domingo until moving to Spain to pursue fashion at the age of 18.
Scott Gries
As the president of CBS Entertainment, Nina Tassler is perhaps the highest profile Latina in the cutthroat world of network television, one of the few execs with the authority to approve (or reject) network series. Industry watchers have alternately praised and sighed at Tassler’s PR strategies, but they all agree—she’s good at what she does.
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From his start in the Latin boy band Menudo to his “Livin la Vida Loca” heyday in the United States, Ricky Martin pioneered America’s late-90’s obsession with Latin culture with the states-side debut of his self-titled CD in 1999. In 2007, Martin hosted the Puerto Rican Day Parade and was the first host to receive the title “El Rey Del Desfile” (the king of the parade) to honor his musical career and work against human trafficking. In recent years, however, Martin’s personal life has fallen under scrutiny, especially when he implied that his nationality precluded homosexuality. “If I were gay, why not admit it?” Martin has said. “I am a normal man. I love women and sex. I am a real hot-blooded Puerto Rican, but I have never been attracted by sex with a man.”
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Baseball star and Yankee right fielder Reggie Jackson was born in Wyncote, Pennsylvania, to Puerto Rican parents. His father, Reginald Martinez Jackson, played ball for the Negro League and ran a family dry-cleaning business. The famous #44 has five World Series titles under his belt, earning him the nickname Mr. October. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1993.
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Anthony Romero set two records when he became the executive director of the ACLU in 2001: the first openly gay man and the first Latin American to lead the civil rights organization. For Romero, who was born to Puerto Rican parents and raised in the Bronx, his Latin roots affect his daily work: “We bring who we are to our job,” he said. When you’ve seen prejudice, you understand that we aren’t finished, that we’re still perfecting this American experiment.”
Karin Cooper
It may seem like reggaeton music is now a fundamental part of Puerto Rican culture, but it hasn’t been around forever. San Juan native Ramón Ayala (“Daddy Yankee”) pioneered the popular hip-hop genre when he fused the Spanish reggae sounds spilling in from Panama with dancehall music, starting with club anthem “Gasolina.”
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It’s usually the other way around, but before he was Geraldo Rivera, he was simply Gerald. The famous talk-show host is a native New Yorker, born with a Jewish mother and a Puerto Rican father. But after he became a lawyer for a Puerto Rican activist group, he realized “Gerald” just didn’t suit him. So changed his name to what his Puerto Rican family called him, Geraldo. And the rest is history.
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