Rita Moreno (born December 11, 1931) is a Puerto Rican actress and singer. She is the only Hispanic and one of the few performers to have won all four major annual American entertainment awards, which include an Oscar, an Emmy, a Grammy and a Tony, and was the second Puerto Rican to win an Academy Award.

Moreno, nicknamed "Rosita", was born Rosa Dolores Alverío in Humacao, Puerto Rico to Rosa María (née Marcano), a seamstress, and Francisco José "Paco" Alverío, a farmer. Moreno, whose mother was 17 at the time of her birth, was raised in nearby Juncos. Rita's mother moved to New York City in 1936, taking her daughter, but not her son, Rita's younger brother, Francisco. Rita would later adopt the surname of her first stepfather, Edward Moreno, Rosa Maria's second husband, by whom Rita would have a younger stepbrother, Dennis Moreno, who died in a car crash.

Rita began her first dancing lessons soon after arriving in New York with a Spanish dancer known as "Paco Cansino", who was a paternal uncle of film star Rita Hayworth. When she was 11 years old, she lent her voice to Spanish language versions of American films. She had her first Broadway role — as "Angelina" in Skydrift — by the time she was 13, which caught the attention of Hollywood talent scouts.

She appeared in small roles in The Toast of New Orleans and Singin' in the Rain, in which she played the starlet "Zelda Zanders".

In March 1954, Moreno was featured on the cover of Life Magazine with a caption, "Rita Moreno: An Actresses' Catalog of Sex and Innocence". In 1956, she had a supporting role in the film version of The King and I as Tuptim, but disliked most of her other work during this period.

In 1961, Moreno landed the role of Anita in Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins' film adaptation of Leonard Bernstein's and Stephen Sondheim's groundbreaking Broadway musical, West Side Story, which had been played by Chita Rivera on Broadway. Moreno won the Best Supporting Actress Academy Award for that role.