Rita Moreno talked about the abuse she experienced in Hollywood in an interview with "60 Minutes."- She recalled how she was raped by her agent when she was a teenager.
Rita Moreno recently opened up to Bill Whitaker for a "60 Minutes" interview about her career and her star-making (and award-winning) role as Anita in the 1961 classic film "
Moreno reflected on what it was like to film the scene where Anita is attacked by members of the Jets gang. "During rehearsals when they were mauling me," she told Whitaker. "I pushed them away and started to cry and I could not stop."
She continued that the scene brought "all of those scars" from her past trauma that she thought had healed back to the surface and they "just opened up."
Moreno has previously spoken out about facing sexual harrassment and abuse in Hollywood at a very young age, years before her famously tumultuous eight-year relationship with actor Marlon Brando. Earlier in 2021, Moreno opened up about being raped by her agent when she was 16 or 17, which was also discussed in the documentary about her life "Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go for It."
She spoke about her assault again to Whitaker.
"He put his hand on my cheek and mounted me," she told Whitaker. "I struggled, but he did it all."
Moreno confessed to feeling shame about the assault, even though she was too young to stop it, and said that she is channeling her real-life pain in Anita's attempted rape scene. She described herself as "a wounded animal."
"I thought, 'How would Marlon say that,'" she told Whitaker, explaining that she channeled her partner to help her utter the words "Don't you touch me" angrily through her teeth.
"That is the scene that I know got me the Oscar," Moreno said.
But according to Moreno, even winning a distinguished honor like an Academy Award did not help her push past the racism in Hollywood. She recalled how she continued to be typecast and was only offered roles in "lesser" gang movies after "West Side Story," which inspired her to move from California to New York.
"I think that perseverance is my middle name," said Moreno, who went on to reach EGOT status after leaving California, becoming one of only 16 people in the industry to win an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony award.
Moreno appears in the remake of "West Side Story" in theaters December 10.