On Wednesday, she trended on Twitter for comments she made on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert regarding criticism of the film adaptation of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s In The Heights for its lack of Afro-Latino and darker-skinned characters in central roles.
Over the course of the doc, we watch as Moreno leaves Puerto Rico with her mother for New York City—never to see her younger brother again—and, seemingly against all odds, make it big in Hollywood, earning the coveted EGOT status by winning an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony in competitive competition, and becoming a living legend in the process.
In a phone call with VF in early June, Moreno brushes off the idea that she found some personal catharsis in finally being able to share her full story with the public.
She talks at length about her inner child—whom she affectionately calls “Rosita” throughout our interview—and makes clear that despite outward success, she continues to process the pain she felt as a child.
She connects Rosita’s trauma to the pain she felt in her marriage to cardiologist Leonard Gordon, whom she stayed with until his death in 2010, revealing in the documentary that the marriage had soured over time.
“I give full credit to the man who helped me through all this morass that I experienced in my life… He’s the guy who eventually got myself to say, ‘I like myself.
Her skin was often darkened to play these parts and she adopted “a universal ethnic accent” that she employed time and again in roles like Tumptim, the Burmese concubine, in The King and I and Ula in Seven Cities of Gold, a chieftain’s daughter who falls off a cliff after being spurned by her white lover.
“The ultimate role model became, to my surprise, Anita in West Side Story, a Hispanic girl who respected herself and had a sense of dignity about herself.
Moreno tells me a story about a day on the set of West Side Story where she expressed to the makeup artist that she was uncomfortable with the makeup she was required to wear to play Anita, makeup that was considerably darker than her natural skin color.
“I couldn’t get a job,” she recalls, mystified.
They’re just wired like that.” Throughout our call, she often comes across as someone approaching 60 rather than someone who’ll turn 90 this December, quick-witted, sharp as a tack and bounding with energy.
“I can’t think of anything, except persevere.” She credits her ability to persevere to her mother, Rosa María, who was “a lady in the sweat shop” by her account.
Still, she sometimes wonders what her career could have looked like without the various setbacks she faced along the way.
“When I finished seeing in a screening room a few months back, I remember getting up from the seat with my daughter and saying, ‘Wow, that’s quite a life.
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