Rosario Dawson

Rosario Isabel Dawson (born May 9, 1979) is an American actress, singer, and writer. She has appeared in films such as Kids, Men in Black II, The 25th Hour, Sin City, Clerks II, Rent, Death Proof, Alexander, Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightening Thief, and Unstoppable.

Dawson was born in New York City. Her mother, Isabel Celeste, is a writer and singer. When Isabel was eighteen, she married Greg Dawson, a construction worker. At the age of 21, Dawson’s parents moved the family into an abandoned building squat on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, where she and her husband renovated an apartment and installed the plumbing and electrical wiring for the building, creating affordable housing where Rosario and Clay would grow up. Dawson has cited this part of her history when explaining how she learned that “If you wanted something better, you had to do it yourself.”

As a child, Dawson made a brief appearance on Sesame Street. At the age of 15, she was subsequently discovered on her front porch step by photographer Larry Clark and Harmony Korine, where Harmony lauded her as being perfect for a part he had written in his screenplay that would become the controversial 1995 film Kids. She went on to star in varied roles, ranging from independent films to big budget blockbusters.

Dawson starred as Naturelle Rivera, the love interest of a convicted drug dealer played by Edward Norton, in the 2002 Spike Lee drama, The 25th Hour. In the 2004 Oliver Stone film Alexander, she played the bride of Alexander the Great. In 2005, she appeared in the adaptation of the graphic novel Sin City, co-directed by Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller, portraying Gail, a prostitute-dominatrix. Also in that year, she appeared in a graphically violent scene in the Rob Zombie film The Devil’s Rejects. Though the scene was cut from the final film, it is available in the deleted scenes on the DVD release.

She starred as Becky in 2006’s Clerks II, and mentioned in Back to the Well, the making-of documentary, that the donkey show sequence was what made her decide to take the role. In May of the same year, Dawson, an avid comic book fan, co-created the comic book miniseries Occult Crimes Taskforce.

She co-starred with former Rent alum Tracie Thoms in the Quentin Tarantino throwback movie Death Proof in 2007, part of the Tarantino/Robert Rodriguez double feature Grind House. That same year, she teamed up with friend Talia Lugacy, whom she met at the Lee Strasberg Academy, to produce and star in the revenge drama Descent.

In 2009, Dawson also voiced the character of Velvet Von Black in Rob Zombie’s animated feature, The Haunted World of El Superbeasto. In 2010, she starred in the movies Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightening Thief, as Persephone, and Unstoppable, as railway yardmaster Connie. She will co-star in the sequel to Sin City, Sin City: A Dame to Kill For, due in 2013.