Rosa Blasi
Rosa Blasi's cheerful demeanor can be ascribed to the festive time of her birth: December 19, 1972. While growing up in Chicago, Illinois, Rosa was always a tease and competed for the attention of the boys when most girls were playing with their Barbie dolls.
At age 8, Rosa got her first taste of the stage, and couldn't get enough of it. With more than 40 stage productions under her belt -- many with the highly-regarded Piven Theatre Workshop in Chicago, as well as Second City -- Rosa was getting the kind of attention she craved. An accomplished singer, Rosa has also dabbled in musicals and even toured with Kenny Rogers.
The stage was great for Rosa Blasi, but she yearned for an even bigger audience. That's where TV came in. She landed a recurring role on the long-running soap opera The Bold and the Beautiful, and did guest appearances on TV's High Tide. In 1997, she did a guest stint on Married... with Children and Lost on Earth, but more importantly, she joined the cast of the UPN sitcom, Hitz.
But it wasn't easy for Rosa. As an ethnic woman, she had to compete with the All-American women that fit the Hollywood mold. Despite her candor, charm and acting flair, she was getting rejected for roles, and therefore considered dying her hair blonde and changing her name to Ren.
Luckily, the Ricky Martin era was just around the corner. There was J.Lo. There was Enrique Iglesias. It was the Latin explosion and suddenly, this very large and overlooked minority came into the spotlight. And so did Rosa.
Because she was so affable and versatile, casting directors called her to appear on TV shows like Frasier, Becker, Caroline in the City, Beverly Hills, 90210, and The Drew Carey Show, from 1998 to 1999.
Rosa was even a hit when it came to being herself. Bill Maher featured her as a regular in his tragically defunct Politically Incorrect, and she's been a guest on The Late Late Show with Craig Kilborn, Love Line, Hollywood Squares, and The Other Half.
Rosa Blasi landed a role in the made-for-TV movie Noriega: God's Favorite (2000), which was shot in the Philippines. While the movie failed to draw praise, Rosa's performance as the Panama dictator's mistress did, and led to her getting a contract in a new series that would become the highest-rated cable TV drama (her nearly nude scene surely had nothing to do with it...),
Strong Medicine, which airs on the Lifetime cable network, was a tour de force that broke the standard TV formula.
In its fourth season, Strong Medicine still drew a crowd -- even males. Since its debut in 2000, she's made time to appear in more movies. In addition to roles in under-the-radar productions like Lesser of Three Evils and Making Changes, Rosa hit the big screen in 2004, in the blockbuster The Grudge, a remake of a Japanese thriller also starring Sarah Michelle Gellar.
Rosa Blasi has been married to New York Giants fullback Jim Finn since February 2004. She enjoys talking about relationships and female genitalia in her interviews, and in traveling productions of The Vagina Monologues (in which she starred).
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