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, 25th Hour, Sin City, Clerks II, Rent, Death Proof, The Rundown, Eagle Eye, Alexander, Seven Pounds, and Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief. Dawson was born in New York City. Her mother, Isabel Celeste, is a writer and singer of Puerto Rican, Afro-Cuban, and Taíno descent; she was seventeen years old when Rosario was born, and never married Rosario's biological father, Patrick Harris. When Isabel was eighteen, she married Greg Dawson, a construction worker, who "loved and raised Rosario as his own daughter" (Dawson has stated that "He's always been my dad"). Rosario Dawson has one younger brother, Clay (b. 1983). At the age of 21, Dawson's mother broke into an abandoned building on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, where she and her husband installed plumbing and electrical wiring, to turn the building into a squat where their two children would grow up. Dawson has cited this when explaining how she learned "If you wanted something better, you had to do it yourself." Her parents divorced while she was in elementary school.