Rosario 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, Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief and Unstoppable.
Dawson was born in New York City. Her mother, Isabel Celeste, is a writer and singer of Puerto Rican and Afro-Cuban descent. She was seventeen-years-old when Rosario was born, and never married Rosario's biological father, Patrick C. 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). Her parents divorced in 2006.
At the age of 26, Dawson's mother moved the family into an abandoned building squat on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, where she and her husband gut renovated an apartment and installed the plumbing and electrical wiring for the building, creating affordable housing where their family and 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."
