The second youngest of 11 siblings, Manny Perez was born in
a small town in the Dominican Republic,
before moving at the age of 10 with his family to Rhode
Island. He would later study drama at Marymount
Manhattan College,
but those years of fighting for familial attention in theatrical fashion have
paid off in a big way, as 2007 sees no fewer than six films featuring Perez
hitting screens.

August itself provides a high-profile one-two punch, in the
form of the just-released El Cantante,
a biopic of salsa legend Hector Lavoe starring Marc Anthony and Jennifer Lopez, and the John
Singleton-produced urban shoot-’em-up Illegal
Tender.

Perez is perhaps most high, though, on writer-director Alejandro
Gomez Monteverde’s Bella, the
People’s Choice Award winner at last year’s Toronto Film Festival, in which he
stars with Tammy Blanchard, Eduardo Verástegui and Ali Landry. “Bella is about a day in the life of a
waitress, a restaurant owner, which is me, and his brother, who’s a chef, and
what happens in that day and what they learn about life — how they learn how to
love life instead of just [getting caught up in] their conflicts,” he says.
“It’s one of those feel-good stories, set in New York City.”

“They say that since this film won the Toronto Film Festival
— in the past, films that have won, like Chariots
of Fire and Crash, I think some
other things, have gone on to be nominated for an Oscar,” Perez continues. “So,
I don’t know if that’s the case, but I truly feel that the film itself, the
storyline, is very Oscar-worthy.”