Roselyn Sanchez stole a lot of the show from Chris Tucker and Jackie Chan in
Rush Hour 2, and provided the first on-screen instance of Chan watching a
woman strip. A Puerto Rican beauty pageant winner, model and dancer, little
other information is available online about rising star Sanchez. She shared some
information with Action/Adventure Movies in an interview at the Fourth Annual
AFFMA Awards.
Sanchez was presenting the Lifetime Achievement Award to her Rush Hour
2 producer, Arthur Sarkissian, but before the ceremony, she posed for photos
and spoke privately with me before the gala banquet. We spoke about her career
path, her Rush Hour 2 experience and upcoming projects, including a
musical she is writing for herself.
How did you go from beauty pageants and modeling to acting? I don't
know. One thing led to the other. I won the pageants and then I left Puerto
Rico, my country. I moved to the states to become an actress and I trained for
many years, singing, dancing and acting and then started doing TV, little things
here and there. Then Rush Hour 2 happened.
Has this movie opened a lot of doors? I think so, absolutely. Just the
fact that I'm here tonight, I'm presenting this award and I just came back from
Germany with Cuba Gooding, Jr. and it's really helping me. I'm very exciting.
I read you studied marketing for a while. Why did you get into that
field and why did you leave? You know what? My father is a businessman so
when he retired, my three brothers didn't go into the business, so I thought I
was going to just take over the business and I tried for three years but I was
working on TV already on the island and I really didn't like it at all. So, I
just told my parents, "You know what? I just can't do it. I'm not interested in
business." So, I left and I pursued what I wanted which is acting and singing
and all that.
What do you love about acting?I think it's fascinating. All my life
I've been performing and just the fact that you can play all these different
roles that are so removed from who you are. Even though the stuff I'm doing
right now is relatively easy, I think in the future I would love to play things
that have nothing to do with me and that's good.
What did you like about being in an action movie? It was fun. It was
just fun. It's so funny because I never saw myself as an action hero and now
everybody sees me like that. And I had an amazing time. Christ Tucker and Jackie
Chan, it was like a dream working with them.
What did they teach you about filmmaking? It was my first big movie
and it was a huge movie. The budget was huge. The comedy was huge and I just
learned about the dynamic of the business when it's such a big movie and Jackie
is the best guy doing what he does. He choreographed everything and he taught me
how to do it and he was great.
Could you communicate with Zhang Ziyi? Very little. Very little, but
she's a beautiful lady and at the end it was a little bit easier. She always had
a translator so it was more like hugs and kisses and just facial expressions. In
terms of really having a conversation, it was a little tough.
How could you play scenes with her when you couldn't talk about
characters? Just laughing. We'd just laugh and laugh.
How do you stay in shape? I just go to the gym and I'm a dancer, so I
dance and dance and dance.
Where do you dance? I go to The Edge in Hollywood and I go to dance
classes at the Gold's Gym where I go to in Santa Monica and just do it. Just
exercise a lot.
Will you be dancing in your next movie? I am dancing a little bit in
my next movie, Boat Trip, and then next year, hopefully I'm going to have
big, big dancing movie that I'm co-writing and it's my dream to do it.
Can you talk about that project yet? It's very premature because the
script is being finished, but it's called Yellow and it's about a
struggling Puerto Rican that moves to New York to make it big as a dancer and
doesn't quite make it. But there's a lot of dancing. It's surreal so it's like
six music videos within the movie.
A story about someone not achieving their dreams is pretty daring. I
know, but it's uplifting because I'm going to make it like she touches
everybody's life around her, but she dies without knowing that she did that. I
hope it's going to be a beautiful drama that I'm going to be able to showcase my
dancing.
What's your character in Boat Trip? I play a choreographer on a
single gay's cruise and Cuba Gooding, Jr.'s the lead and Vivica Fox is the lady.
I'm just a Latina, outgoing, very nice, very talented girl that falls in love
with Cuba.
When presenting the award to Sarkissian, Sanchez said, "I'm so honored to
have the opportunity to present this award to you, Arthur. He's someone I hold
very, very close to my heart. I have been in the States for almost seven years
and as any actress knows, it's up and down, up and down and struggling. For a
long time, everybody told me, 'You know what? Just one movie is going to make
the difference, one big movie.' I was so blessed to get Rush Hour 2 and a
lot of it had to do with Arthur Sarkissian."
