Why the Rita Moreno Sundance documentary should be required viewing [Los Angeles Times :: BC-MOVIE-SUNDANCE-MORENO-DOCUMENTARY:LA]
Rita Moreno has received just about every major award and accolade possible for an entertainer — most notably becoming the first Latina actress to win an Academy Award. But the actress, who battled the pain of typecasting early in her career — and questioned her worth because of it — couldn’t see, in the moment, how history-making her career would be for those who came after her.
“Was I aware? No,” she said. “And I wasn’t because I didn’t think of myself in that way. That’s iconic thinking. As far as I was concerned, I had won that Oscar and it was just, ‘Rita Moreno had won that.’ I didn’t know at the time, really, that I was representing [for a community].”