What The Surviving Stars Of West Side Story Are Doing Today

March 2024 · 2 minute read

Rita Moreno portrayed the unforgettable Anita, Maria's sister, in West Side Story, but years later, the actress revealed that she nearly quit the production due to the way it portrayed Puerto Ricans, particularly in the famous song "America." 

"I was going to give it up on principle, not because I was brave — but because I couldn't bear the thought of doing this to my people," she told The Hollywood Reporter in 2019. "But then [Stephen] Sondheim changed the lyric." 

Morena is also involved in Steven Spielberg's 2020 remake of the iconic musical as "both an actress and an executive producer — a role that's intended to help guide the project away from the original's dated and racially insensitive elements," per THR.

Morena, who celebrated her 88th birthday in 2019, has certainly dazzled throughout her career, becoming one of only 15 artists to date to win an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony (aka EGOT). She also received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President George W. Bush in 2004. One of Moreno's recent credits was her 2017 role in the Netflix remake of the 1975 sitcom One Day at a Time, where she played the hilarious matriarch of a Cuban-American family, and she still has acting goals on her bucket list. "I'd love very much to play a character that isn't necessarily Hispanic," she told THR.

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