Rosario Dawson

Rosario Dawson (born May 9, 1979) is an American actress and occasional singer best known for her roles in films such as Sin City, Rent and Clerks II. Dawson was born in New York City to Isabelle, a Bronx-born professional vocalist, and Greg Dawson, a construction worker. The two are now divorced. Her father is of Native American and Irish ancestry and her mother is of Puerto Rican and Afro-Cuban ancestry. Dawson grew up on Manhattan's Lower East Side and has a brother named Clay. She and her family squatted in an abandoned building during most of her childhood. While attending school, she had aspirations of becoming a marine biologist. Dawson's acting career began when filmmaker Larry Clark saw her on a Manhattan stoop and asked her to be in a film he was making. The movie, Kids, became a critical success and Dawson's performance was commended, and as a result she decided to pursue career in acting; attending the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute. Dawson has worked steadily since her debut, with a mixed amount of commercial and critical success. As of 2006, she has worked with such notable directors as Oliver Stone, Robert Rodriguez, Kevin Smith and Spike Lee, and costarred with the likes of Will Smith, Edward Norton, Taye Diggs, and Colin Farrell. Dawson's films have varied; ranging from independent films, to highly successful big budget blockbusters, and large scale box office bombs. Among her successes are the Spike Lee-directed He Got Game, opposite professional basketball player Ray Allen, and Men in Black II, which saw her sharing the screen with Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones, and among her failures are the long-shelved The Adventures of Pluto Nash (which was nominated for six Golden Raspberry Awards) and the live-action film adaptation of Josie and the Pussycats, though the latter did go on to find a cult audience once it was released on home video. In 1999, Dawson teamed up with Prince for the timely re-release of his 1980s hit "1999". The new remixed version featured the actress in an introductory voice over, offering commentary on the state of the world in the titular year. The same year she could be seen in The Chemical Brothers video for the song "Out of Control" from the album Surrender. She is also featured on the track "She Lives In My Lap" from the second disc of the OutKast album Speakerboxxx/The Love Below, during which she speaks the intro and a brief interlude towards the end. In 2005, Dawson appeared on stage as Julia in the Public Theatre revival of Galt MacDermot's 1971 musical The Two Gentlemen of Verona at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park, New York (August-September 2005). Her films for that year included the adaptation of the popular musical Rent, where she played Mimi Marquez, and the adaptation of the graphic novel Sin City, where she played the prostitute-dominatrix, Gail. She will appear in Sin City's sequel in 2008. In 2006's Clerks II, Dawson starred as Becky, the crush-turned-wife of Dante. As she mentioned in the making of documentary, Back to the Well, the donkey show sequence was what made her decide to appear in the movie. In May of the same year, Dawson, an avid comic book fan, co-created the comic book miniseries Occult Crimes Taskforce.