Rosa Salazar is the young actress who first rose to fame playing the role of Yolanda in an episode titled ‘Zuma Canyon’ of American police procedural and legal drama television series, Law & Order: LA. Born in Canada, in July of 1985, Rosa Salazar has French ancestry. She began acting in New York City, but it turned serious when she moved from NY to Los Angeles, CA in 2009. Since then the actress has bagged roles in many hit films, and television series, like The Divergent Series: Insurgent, Parenthood, and American Horror Story: Murder House, The Maze Runner: Scorch Trials and Battle Angel. Even though the actress plays unique roles, her face is becoming more familiar as she continues to make a name for herself in the industry, and amazingly, she’s still a pretty good human being despite having a tough road to success.
Here are a few more things you might not know about Rosa Salazar:
Lesser Known Facts About Rosa Salazar’s Life
She was born in Canada:
Rosa Salazar’s birthplace is British Columbia, Canada but she grew up in Washington, D.C. and nearby Greenbelt, Maryland.
Rosa Salazar says she’s a tomboy:
When it comes to describing herself to others, Salazar says that she is really a tomboy at heart, and in body. When she is all dressed up with a full face of makeup, you might never know that she internally feels different but she’s more sporty. She has also sported some really cute, super chic short hairstyles that definitely fit the role of being a tomboy.
Although some women say this and others actually mean it, Rosa seems like the type of person that won’t obsess over how she looks before going out for the day as she tosses on a pair of jeans and a shirt without skipping a beat, before stepping out to do whatever comes to mind.
Rosa Salazar wore a Mohawk for a role:
Rosa’s breakthrough role came in 2015, when she landed the role of Lynn on The Divergent Series: Insurgent. Her role in Insurgent laid the groundwork for the actor she is today. In the film, she had to wear a Mohawk to better portray Lynn’s role.
Some of the roles actors take on, require them to make changes to their looks to where they may not even recognize themselves. Some changes are big, while others are not a big deal, but any change you make, it can give you a different feeling about the way you perceive yourself. One change Salazar said she had to make for her role in Insurgent was with her hair. The character wore a Mohawk, which she said had an effect on the way she viewed herself, which was all….badass. Nothing like a good Mohawk to make you feel a little, “kickass.”
Long live the tomboy hair!
Rosa Salazar used to be hyper:
There is one major reason why the Canadian actress began her acting at the young age of 15.
“Oh man, I just could not shut up!” she told Ross Carey. “I was just that kid in the family that you put on the table and watch it dance around and you’re like, ‘Oh, look at that hyper kid!’
She would also act a lot in front of the mirror and truly connect with her range of emotions- high strung or low. Before she went to sleep, she would practice various emotions, and contort her face to match those emotions. Salazar revealed in an interview with We Got This Covered:
“I just practiced doing that kind of stuff as a kid all the time. I was that kid who was always practicing crying or falling asleep or being angry or excited. I was that weirdo in the room making faces.
She moved to New York to become an actress:
Rosa went to the Eleanor Roosevelt High School, and she was very active in the school’s theatre program. After that, she moved to New York to pursue better acting opportunities.
In New York, she worked with CollegeHumor, and she appeared in several of their sketches. After staying in New York for a while, she moved to Los Angeles to really get her acting career started.
She relocated to Los Angeles, and in 2011, she swiftly landed roles in the TV series American Horror Story: Murder House and Parenthood. She went on to appear in the shows and films such as Body of Proof, Man Seeking Woman, Maze Runner: The Death Cure, and The Kindergarten Teacher.
A lot of people make their way to NY and LA in hopes of finding some way to attain their dreams. She’s one of the lucky ones that managed to get out there and make herself known. She also relocated to LA in 2009 to really get her career going. YAY HOLLYWOOD!
Her career started in 2010:
Born on 16th July 1985, Rosa Salazar grew up in Washington D.C., and Greenbelt, Maryland. As a young child, she always felt the urge to become an entertainer. However, Rosa had a tough upbringing, and at one point as a teen, she was homeless. Her tough situation motivated her to work hard at being an actor. And now she’s super successful!
Alita: Battle Angel
Rosa Salazar stars through performance-capture animation as the titular heroine Alita, a cyborg who awakens in a new body with no memory of her past, so she sets out to uncover her destiny.
The movie Alita: Battle Angel is a 2019 American cyberpunk action film based on Japanese manga artist Yukito Kishiro’s 1990s series Gunnm and its 1993 original video animation adaptation Battle Angel. The movie had some kickass actors like Christoph Waltz, Jennifer Connelly, Mahershala Ali, Ed Skrein, Jackie Earle Haley, and Keean Johnson who co-starred with Rosa in supporting roles. She was the lead actress.
American Horror Story: Murder House
Most of Rosa’s on-screen appearances have been on sci-fi flicks, and she has no issue perfecting her role as a genre actor. According to Rosa, it helps her creative process.
Perhaps that’s why she was excited about playing a psycho nurse. However, it doesn’t seem as though she was brought back for Roanoke however and there’s no word yet on whether she’ll come back with the next installment of AHS that’s supposed to be a crossover between Murder House and Coven. The actress who loves horror, movies said:
“I love horror. It’s a shock to me that I’ve never been invited to do a horror film, like a slasher pic. Those are some of the first movies I ever saw, thanks to my dad. And they are some of the movies that I crave to do. These movies are a really good showcase for women.”
Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials.
The Mazerunner movies have been of a mediocre project that people have paid attention to but don’t see as supremely groundbreaking when it comes to film. Rose played her part however and did it just as well as she could.
Divergent series: Insurgent.
Acting on Insurgent played more to her liking as she wanted to be the action-type for a while it sounds like. The actress surely has the kind of energy that would allow her to excel in such an environment.
She’s a health nut(or we should say juice):
Rosa Salazar is known for her healthy eating habits and says that she loves to snack on healthy snack foods. Not only does she believe in eating healthy herself, but she likes to help others eat healthy too. One way she does this is to show up for work and pass out juices to her co-workers. Taking the gesture a step further, she brings different types of juices for everyone, a specific flavor of juice she thinks each person will like most.
For example, Monday is fresh pineapple juice for one co-worker, and Tuesday beckons a fresh tomato and celery combo juice. Her co-workers have gotten accustomed to Salazar’s healthy eating suggestions and think it’s actually very sweet and considerate of the actress to take the time to personalize her gift of juice-giving for each of them. Wonder what she gave them on their birthdays!
Rosa Salazar spent time being homeless:
“I told myself when I was broke and homeless that my biggest goal was just to have a house,” she wrote in Nylon. “That goal was achieved. I’m just really, really lucky.”
Shockingly, the actress was first on her own at fifteen and living on her own. She worked at Dominoes for a while, but once she got out of high school, she started bumming around America. In an interview, she talked about how lost she felt, homeless and no real plans for her future. She had one goal during those years, and it was to own a home.
Salazar says that she saw the movie I Heart Huckabee during those vagrant times, and it was that movie that made her realize how much she liked acting, and it motivated her. She became totally enthralled with the business.
She was hit with a restraining order in 2018
Celebrities are always under the microscope for everything they do. Their every move is put out there for everyone to see, and this is especially true if they happen to have a run-in with the law. One bad day can show up randomly and it will surely be made public. Salazar found this out when one night she showed up to her ex-boyfriend’s house, Sam Setzer, and had a bit of a breakdown, acting kind of “stalkerish” by pounding on his door, shouting loudly, ringing the doorbell over-and-over, until he finally had to call the local police. Setzer filed for a restraining order and that’s the story.
She considers Adam Pally her on-screen husband
In an interview with the Huffington Post, “Night Owls” co-star Adam Pally recalled the first time he met Salazar. “I didn’t know who she was, and she came into hair and makeup dressed as Pocahontas,” he said. “When you meet Rosa, anyone who meets her right away is like, Who is that?”
She had to learn about weaponry and how to use a gun
When you’re an actor, there are a lot of things you may have to learn in order to fit a role. If you take a role that requires you to sing professionally, you will probably spend a lot of time in music classes learning how, before you start making the film. Or if you are in a movie that requires handling different weapons and firing a gun, you’re probably going to spend quite a bit of time at the shooting range and learning how to handle a gun. That’s precisely what Salazar had to do when she accepted her role in Maze Runner. She says that she had to perform some stunts in Insurgent, but she’s taking it up a notch in Maze Runner, and gun handling is part of it for this film.
She used to practice contorting her face while trying to fall asleep at night:
In an interview with We Got This Covered, Salazar said, “I just practiced doing that kind of stuff as a kid all the time. I was that kid who was always practicing crying or falling asleep or being angry or being excited. I was that weirdo in my room making faces.”
Rosa Salazar had to undergo training for five months before she was ready to play Alita: Battle Angel.
Rosa’s first leading role came in the manga-inspired film Alita: Battle Angel. She got to work with the famous directors James Cameron and Robert Rodriguez. Her character, Alita, wakes up with no memory in a future that she doesn’t recognize. Rosa talked to Den Of Geek about her experience working with two top directors;
“It was great. You know, I wasn’t fangirling. I love their films, but I looked at them as colleagues, as mentors, as artists. And I felt like they looked at me the same way. We were all collaborating partners. And that was quite empowering too to be seen that way by these titans of filmmaking.”
Rosa has been praised for her portrayal of a role which she describes as one of the most intense roles that she’s ever done. She had to undergo training for five months before she was ready to play the role. Rosa described the effects of her training;
“…what happened was I became mentally strong. I learned what it’s like to have a warrior’s mindset. And that was really priceless – I wasn’t expecting that. I ended up doing more stunts than we were expecting, and it was because I had that education for a longer period of time.”
Rosa is honored by the fact that she was named among the top female actors after her performance. She continued;
“I felt like when I got this role, I was being inducted into a very special honor society of strong female protagonists who are dynamic, who are realistic to the women I see every day.”
Having acted for less than a decade seems to indicate that any actor would have a long way to go yet when it comes to experience and being able to really call themselves a seasoned genre actress. Rosa Salazar has a nice, long list of accomplishments but it is true that she still has a ways to go before she’s considered to be one of the greats. But she’s on the right track and has done great so far.
