Rosie is Riveting
That cartoonish voice belies the beauty within.
Several things come to mind when I reflect on photographing Rosie Perez. First and foremost: that voice. She sprinted up my three long flights of stairs, no mean feat, talking the whole time a mile a minute to her publicist who just tried to keep up. We could hear her coming all the way up the stairs. And when I say talking, remember we’re talking Rosie Perez here, of Do the Right Thing and White Men Can’t Jump. She is a stunner, gorgeous, but it’s her aural aura that compels you to pay attention. Whether it’s sassing Spike Lee or Woody Harelson or ordering lunch, you can’t take your ears off her. The way other stars use their gaze, Rosie envelops you with her voice.
We’d watched her get out of the town car from the usual perch (one publicist) and heard her rapid ascent of the multiple flights of stairs. She showed up looking flawless, camera ready. Cute little outfit, hair and makeup professionally applied, this seemed like it would be easy. She paused briefly upon entering the loft to scope out the situation, cordially and professionally greeted me, allowed me to bathe in the Voice for a few moments, then restarted her monologue as she disappeared into my green room.
She was not to appear for more than an hour, a serious anticlimax. My crew and I were bemused by periodic breathless updates from my longtime stylist Tonjua Twist. From her we learned that this was Perez’ fifth gig of the day. She had started by appearing on Good Morning America at six AM and continued a full day of media appearances promoting her new movie before arriving for our shoot late afternoon. Photo sessions and appearances were stressful hard work, particularly when one considered the consequences to one’s career of a crappy interview or bad photo. Booking one’s star into an entire day of high profile and high stakes gigs is publicist incompetence. Each of Tonjua’s increasingly alarming reports of how long Rosie had been working, how little she’d eaten, and just how worn out she was, left my assistants and I to wonder just how good to go she’d be when we finally got her in front of some lights.
She needn’t have worried. In fact I was the one worried, as I felt literally bad for being the photographic straw that broke the camel’s back, or the last in a too-long line of shoots. Either way, I generally strove to get people to enjoy being in front of my camera, and this was not a way to achieve that. A cigarette and a cheeseburger seemed a much better remedy, but I had to get my shot. Let me tell you something: Rosie is a trooper if nothing else. She is certainly taller when employing that Voice but we saw fit to put her on a platform anyway. Wind her up and she goes, exhaustion or not. She was attentive, charming, delightful, intriguing and hot as a pistol. We were shooting for GQ. She understood the assignment: leave the ridiculous and hilarious persona embodied by the voice aside, and smolder baby, smolder. In multiple outfits on various sets, no less. There is a reason Rosie Perez is on the A-list, and this shoot is evidence of it. Looking back, feeding her a cheeseburger on set would have been an excellent move. But I think this smoking-hot-writhing-in-tiny-little-outfits-provided-by-Tonjua thing worked out pretty well, don’t you?
Her dancing in the i tro to Do the Right Thing was AMAZING!
Fun fact: I went to high school for a while with Rosie, though I didn't really know her. She was in a group home for a while up here, Wappingers Falls, also famous as the home of Tawana Brawley.