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It's easy to look at Rita Moreno's career and her natural ability to command attention and think that she was simply destined for fame. But that couldn't be farther from the truth.
In fact, Moreno's road to becoming one of the rare few EGOT winners—those who've earned an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony Award—has been burdened with obstacles from the very beginning. Her story of how she found fame, or indeed how she grabbed it by the horns, is key to appreciating the legend she is.
Intrigued? Click through and learn more about the star you thought you knew.
Rita Moreno, originally Rosa Dolores Alverío, was nowhere near Hollywood's lap when she was born on December 11, 1931. In fact, she was born into poverty on a Puerto Rican farm. Then when she was five, Moreno and her seamstress mother immigrated to New York City.
In 1945, at the tender age of 13, Moreno made her Broadway debut in 'Skydrift.' She later made her first big-screen appearance in 'So Young, So Bad' (1950). After this role, she signed a seven-year contract with Louis B. Mayer's MGM Studios, which was reportedly partly due to the fact that she looked like, in the words of Mayer, "a Spanish Elizabeth Taylor."
Despite all her studies and experience on Broadway, Moreno was continually cast as any ethnic minority the Hollywood studios needed, including Hawaiian, Native American, Egyptian, Filipino, and so forth. For example, in 'The King and I' (1956), Moreno plays a young Burmese woman named Tuptim.
During the 2021 Sundance Film Festival, Moreno shared that when Gene Kelly asked her to cut her hair for her role as Zelda Zanders in 'Singin' in the Rain,' she "did something that is so Latina" and "said no." He was apparently "taken aback" and asked why, and Moreno said it went against her culture. "Well, we don't cut my hair where I live, we don't do that," she said. They ended up putting her in a wig.
Moreno has spoken about being assaulted by her agent when she was 16 or 17. In a '60 Minutes' interview in 2021, she confessed to feeling shame about the assault, even though she was too young to do anything about it back then, and she said it was especially painful when she later filmed 'West Side Story' because of the assault scene opening up those old wounds.
In 1954, when Moreno was 22, she met Marlon Brando, then 30, on the set of 'Désirée.' "Just meeting him that first day sent my body temperature skyrocketing as though I had been dropped into a very hot bath, and I went into a full-body blush," she wrote in her self-titled 2013 memoir, according to the New York Post. "To say that he was a great lover—sensual, generous, delightfully inventive—would be gravely understating what he did not only to my body, but for my soul," she revealed, though little did she know what she was getting herself into.
While the pair were on and off, Brando married Anna Kashfi (pictured here slapping him after they divorced and he won a court case to increase visitation with his son) in 1957 and Movita Castaneda in 1960, and fathered children with both of them. Moreno wrote of the time, "He broke my heart and came close to crushing my very spirit with his physical infidelities and, worse, with his emotional betrayals." Still, she "couldn't stay away," and added, "In fact, I was becoming addicted to the challenge of winning him over and over again."
If Brando was going to be with other women, Moreno figured she could make him jealous by getting with other men. First she dated Dennis Hopper, and then Elvis Presley. "I knew no one could possibly make Marlon Brando more jealous," she wrote in her memoir, though their relationship didn't last long.
Soon after their reconciliation, Moreno found out she was pregnant with Brando's child, and "To my shock and horror, Marlon immediately arranged for an abortion," she wrote—a procedure which was illegal at the time. But after the procedure she found out the fetus was still inside and had to be removed surgically at the hospital. Brando was angry at the botched abortion instead of showing Moreno sympathy.
Brando went off to film 'Mutiny on the Bounty' (1962), where he fell for his co-star Tarita Teriipaia, and Moreno, who'd recently wrapped filming on 'West Side Story,' couldn't handle seeing him with another woman so she attempted to take her own life in his house by swallowing many of his sleeping pills.
"I went to bed to die," she wrote in the memoir. Luckily his assistant found her and rushed her to get her stomach pumped. Years later in conversation with Jessica Chastain on Variety's 'Actors on Actors' series, Moreno said, "I didn't understand that if I was going to kill this pathetic, sad, trod-upon Rita, the rest of Rita was also going to go with me. I really didn't seem to understand that. But that's what the attempt was. It was an attempt." A therapist asked them to not see each other again, and the two agreed. Brando married Teriipaia soon after.
The traumas she experienced with Brando helped fuel Moreno's lifelong hunger for justice and her support for left-wing political causes, particularly women's rights.
The role that turned her life around was Anita in the 1961 film version of the musical 'West Side Story.' It earned her the O from her EGOT, and is her best-known role to this day.
At the 1962 ceremony, Moreno took home the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her role in 'West Side Story,' and became the first Hispanic woman to ever receive an Academy Award.
In 2022, six decades later, Ariana DeBose took home the very same award for the very same role in Steven Spielberg's remake, for which Moreno was an executive producer. DeBose paid tribute to "the divine inspiration that is Rita Moreno," who watched her accept the award from the audience and said, "I'm so grateful your Anita paved the way for tons of Anitas like me, and I love you so much."
Instead of her 'West Side Story' role launching her film career, Moreno's agents still only submitted her for "exotic" and Latina roles in gang movies. She decided to leave Hollywood and focus on acting in summer theater for the next seven years.
In 1965, Moreno married cardiologist and internist Leonard Gordon, who subsequently became her manager after he retired from medicine. She remained with him until his death in 2010, and they share one child together, Fernanda Luisa Gordon, who was born in 1967
Moreno made her return to Hollywood in the late '60s and early '70s with popular films such as 'The Night of the Following Day' (1969), which co-starred none other than Marlon Brando
In 1968, Moreno reached out to Brando, and he subsequently cast her as his love interest in 'The Night of the Following Day' (1969). Moreno told Vulture she woke up after a wine-filled reunion dinner with Brando begging her to sleep with him, but she denied him. Then, on set, a scene where she had to slap him triggered "old wounds, hurts, resentment, and disrespect" and, she said, "I went berserk." The scene's violence is "for real," and the director kept rolling and put it in the final cut. "I feel so sorry for that girl on the screen. I really, really do," Moreno told Vulture.
Despite it all, the two became friends and permanent fixtures in each other's lives. Brando even became friends with her husband and her daughter (pictured). Moreno expressed gratitude that Brando told her she needed therapy, "which now makes me really laugh hard because it's one loony telling the other loony that they need help," she told Vulture. "It turned out he was absolutely right. It's probably the greatest favor I ever did for myself."
Moreno also started performing more on television. From 1971 to 1977, she co-starred with Morgan Freeman in the PBS kids' show 'The Electric Company.'
In 1972, Moreno won a Grammy for 'The Electric Company Album' based on her contributions to the show's soundtrack, which gave her the G in her EGOT.
In 1975, Moreno appeared as Googie Gomez in the musical 'The Ritz' and earned the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress, filling in the T of her EGOT.
Then in 1977, Moreno appeared on 'The Muppet Show' and earned a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Individual Performance in a Variety or Music Program. Completing her EGOT status, Moreno became only the third person in history and first ever Latina to achieve the feat of winning all four major entertainment awards.
From the late '90s to early '00s, she played a nun, who is also a drug counselor and psychologist, in the HBO prison drama 'Oz,' the cast of which is pictured in 2004.
Moreno was invited to perform at President Bill Clinton's inauguration in 1993, she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from George W. Bush in 2004, and in 2010 she received the National Medal of Arts from Barack Obama.
In 2011, Moreno starred in the critically acclaimed 'Rita Moreno: Life Without Makeup,' which was a biographical show staged in California that showcased her zesty spirit even at 79 years old.
From 2017-2020, Moreno found fresh acclaim as the matriarch of a Cuban American family in the reboot of Norman Lear's 1970s sitcom 'One Day at a Time.'
In 2021, her documentary 'Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go for It' premiered, offering an intimate reflection on her life and career.
Sources: (National Women's History Museum) (Britannica) (Biography) (The Guardian) (Page Six) (Insider) (New York Post) (Vulture)
Rita Moreno’s turbulent road to EGOT royalty
She turns 93 today
CELEBRITY Retrospective
It's easy to look at Rita Moreno's career and her natural ability to command attention and think that she was simply destined for fame. But that couldn't be farther from the truth.
In fact, Moreno's road to becoming one of the rare few EGOT winners—those who've earned an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony Award—has been burdened with obstacles from the very beginning. Her story of how she found fame, or indeed how she grabbed it by the horns, is key to appreciating the legend she is.
Intrigued? Click through and learn more about the star you thought you knew.