Don’t judge a book by its cover, says Rosie Perez — and don’t judge a woman by her accent! The Brooklyn-born and -bred actress (“Do the Right Thing”) says she and her agent were shopping around the book she’d written — she won’t give any details — only to hear, at some publishing houses, “I can’t believe you wrote this all by yourself!” So it was wonderful, she says, to be cast as Vanessa, the Jersey-accented best-selling writer in the Manhattan Theatre Club’s “Close Up Space,” co-starring David Hyde Pierce as her snobby editor. “Just because you’re bridge-and-tunnel or from the boroughs, some people believe you don’t have a certain level of intelligence,” Perez says. “It’s beyond their imagination.” Here’s what’s in her library.
Another Country
by James Baldwin
My ex-husband, when we were moving in together, saw “Giovanni’s Room” on my bookshelf and said, “Oh, I’ll put my James Baldwin book here.” I said “Another Country”? It took me about half a year to finish that book because it’s so intense. Homophobia, racism— it’s such a collage of isms that hold us back as people, and Baldwin didn’t excuse anyone.
The Princess Bride
by William Goldman
A teacher gave this to me. He said, “You’re going to appreciate this, with your sense of humor.” And it was the first book that made me laugh out loud. It felt like a New Yorker’s point of view of a fairy tale, and I couldn’t put it down. I liked the movie, but it wasn’t the book.
The Power Broker
by Robert A. Caro
A very good friend and I were discussing Shakespeare in the Park and he said, “That almost didn’t happen because of Robert Moses,” and gave me this book to read. People always talk about Tammany Hall, but they don’t talk about the politics of the 1960s. [Moses] had New York in the palm of his hand, the mayor and everyone. Holy crapola!
The Known World
by Edward P. Jones
[Director] George C. Wolfe gave this book to me a few years ago. For my birthday, I want only three things: dark chocolate, trips to five-star hotels and really good novels. I dove into this and my jaw dropped . . . the love story, the struggle and the journey [through slavery]! George and I still talk about this book.