Ebullient, high-voiced Latina actress who garnered attention for her portrayal of Spike Lee's fast-talking, no-nonsense girlfriend in 1989's "Do the Right Thing".

Perez began her career as a featured dancer on "Soul Train", moving on to choreograph numbers for such recording artists as Bobby Brown and Diana Ross. Her choreography credits also include the opening title sequence for "Do the Right Thing" and the "flygirl" segments of TV's "In Living Color". In the hit comedy feature "White Men Can't Jump" (1992), Perez played Woody Harrelson's girlfriend, a "motor-mouth" whose life's ambition is to appear on the TV game show "Jeopardy". She made an equally loquacious appearance in Jim Jarmusch's "Night on Earth" (1991), in the segment which also featured Giancarlo Esposito and Armin Mueller-Stahl. In 1993, Perez replaced her usually strident image with a much softer turn as a plane-crash survivor in Peter Weir's "Fearless", for which she received good reviews and an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress. She followed with a turn as Nicolas Cage's greedy wife in "It Could Happen to You" (1994) and as a taxi dancer in love with the wrong man in Alexandre Rockwell's "Somebody to Love" (filmed in 1994, released theatrically in 1996).