FIRED!

Rosie Perez: Agent Wanted to Give Me Blonde Hair, Nose Job

“I can get you more jobs. Because you’re not Black,” the agent told her.

Rosie Perez says early in her career, her agent told her she needed a drastic makeover to succeed. “I don’t want her to be canceled, but she told me that if I dyed my hair blond and got a nose job, ‘I can get you more jobs. Because you’re not Black.’ I couldn’t believe it. I was like, ‘Oh, my goodness. Like, thank you, fired,’” Perez told Variety. The star of movies, television, and stage said she mentioned the incident to Jennifer Grey, her co-star on the 1990 HBO movie Criminal Justice. “She’s like, ‘I cannot believe how racist this industry is.’ She picks up the phone and calls Jane Berliner at CAA and says, ‘You need to represent this actress.’” Perez declined to name the previous agent.