When Rosa Dolores Alverío was 5, she and her mother left Puerto Rico and moved to Spanish Harlem, where they shared a tenement apartment with an aunt and too many other relatives.

''We were very poor,'' she says. ``My mother and I shared a bed. I'll never forget it. It was a very old iron bed with a very sagging mattress. Whenever you turned on the lights in the kitchen, hundreds of cockroaches scattered. I have never been afraid of them because of that. I lived with them.''

It would be years before MGM would make Rosa Dolores lose the name in favor of the catchier Rita Moreno, but even back then in her bleak environment, the little girl who helped her mother make paper roses to sell to Woolworth already had tunnel vision about becoming a movie star. By the time she was 11, she was dubbing American films into Spanish.

``I was 17 when they asked me to change my name. Moreno was my stepfather's last name. And I wasn't happy about Rita. Although it's pretty if you pronounce the T. I was in England for a while, and they always called me Ri-ta.''

Fast forward to 1961, after countless career struggles, when 28-year-old Moreno became the first Hispanic to win an Oscar -- best supporting actress for her role as Anita in West Side Story. Her mother sat right behind her at the show, overcome with pride.

Moreno became a household name. But winning the Oscar did more than cement her fame. It gave her the sense of self-worth she had lacked, a boost which, fortunately or not, left her with the courage to say no to the ''demeaning'' roles she was offered.

''Ha, ha. I showed them. I didn't make another movie for seven years after winning the Oscar,'' says Moreno, 76, who was in town to host an Aetna-sponsored reception at the United Way Center for Excellence in Early Education.

Along the way she nabbed all the big awards -- Oscar, Tony, Emmy, Grammy. 'People said, `Winning the Oscar is a jinx.' No it isn't. It's just that I was being offered all this terrible stuff, and I thought, 'No, I don't have to do that stuff anymore,' '' Moreno says over achiote chicken and couscous at the Coral Gables Hyatt.

``What is interesting to me is having the vision so early and yet feeling so inferior to everybody else in the business for years and years because I believed I had to be subservient to anybody who wasn't Latino. Before West Side Story I was always offered the stereotypical Latina roles. The Conchitas and Lolitas in westerns. I was always barefoot. It was humiliating, embarrassing stuff. But I did it because there was nothing else. After West Side Story, it was pretty much the same thing. A lot of gang stories.''

THE NEW GUARD

There is no doubt Moreno helped open the door for Hispanic entertainers. And she gives props to the youngsters for breaking ground.

``I respect Jennifer Lopez. She made herself into a brand. And Salma Hayek is amazing. She's an incredible actress and a great producer. The fact that she was able to put this movie together, Frida, is astonishing. She also happens to be drop-dead gorgeous.''

In 2007, Moreno appeared in an episode of Ugly Betty, for which Hayek is an executive producer. At the end of taping, she gave Betty star America Ferrera a special gift.

'I had never done this before, but I gave her a photo of me holding the Oscar and wrote something like, `Just hold on to your vision. Don't let anyone distract you.' She is wonderful.''

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