Sometimes talented Latinas are ‘hot’ for a year and then disappear, sometimes forever. And then there are actresses like Rosario Dawson who burst onto the scene and just work–all the time, and always interesting. Last year was a relatively quiet one for Dawson, (maybe because of all her involvement with the elections and Voto Latino) with only the Lifetime movie Five and the inexplicably direct-to-video action picture Fire with Fire, but 2013 promises to be a blockbuster for her…and it’s only just begun. Over the next few months, you’ll see her in:
Trance, the new psycho-thriller that released earlier in April. Danny Boyle’s newest has already garnered great reviews, and so has Dawson. The critic from The New Yorker called her character “a rare blend of she-devil and sculptured deity, rising above the follies of mere men.”
As Dolores Huerta in the long-awaited biopic Chavez, directed by Diego Luna and featuring a stellar cast, including Michael Peña, America Ferrera, and Jacob Vargas.
Gimme Shelter, co-starring with Vanessa Hudgens and Brendan Fraser, among other. Dawson goes very dark in this small, dramatic film about a teenager who sets out to find her Wall Street father and is forced into the streets in a desperate journey of survival. She play’s the young woman’s mother, an abusive addict and prostitute who’s grooming her daughter to be the same.
Raze, a horror/action picture starring legendary stunt woman Zoe Bell, that focuses on two abducted women (50 other women) who are forced to fight each other using their bare hands. Battle Royale, anyone? Raze will premiere later this April at the Tribeca Film Festival.
Sin City: A Dame to Kill For is the much-anticipated sequel to Sin City, and Rosario is back (along with much of the original cast) in this highly stylized, ultra-violent graphic novel of a movie, written by Sin City creator Frank Miller and co-directed by Miller and Robert Rodriguez. That hits a huge number of theaters this October.
…not to mention They Die at Dawn, a Western-style short with Kelly Hu and her old buddy Jesse Martin, from Rent. And at least two projects featuring Dawson have already been announced for 2014, including Queen of the Night, a kidnap drama with Ryan Reynolds, and Parts per Billion, a harrowing bio-war drama with Josh Harnett and Alexis Bledel.
That’s almost six projects completed or in the works since Kids, when she was just a kid herself. And she’s not even 35 yet. Clearly, a talented woman moving upward and onward, and we get to go along for the ride.
