Shelley Morrison

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Shelley Morrison

Birth name

Rachel Mitrani

Born

October 26, 1936 (age 71)
New York, New York U.S.

Spouse(s)

Walter Dominguez (1973 - present)

Awards
Screen Actors Guild Awards
Nominated 2004 Will & Grace Nominated 2002 Will & Grace

Shelley Morrison (born Rachel Mitrani on October 26, 1936 in New York City) is an American actress. Early in her career, she was sometimes also credited as Rachel Domínguez.

Morrison has been a theater and television actress since the early 1960s, predominantly as a character actress in ethnic roles. Her most widely recognizable recent role has been as the Salvadoran maid Rosario Inez Consuelo Yolanda Salazar in the NBC comedy television series Will & Grace which she played from 1999 to 2006. She was a regular performer on the sitcom The Flying Nun playing Sister Sixto, and she continued in television guest roles until securing a recurring role in the soap opera General Hospital in 1982. She has also been called a non-hispanic but is actually a Sephardic Jew of Spanish descent.

She has endorsed U.S. Congressman Dennis Kucinich for President in 2008, actively fundraising and seeking votes for him.

[edit] Biography and career

The only daughter of Sephardic Jewish parents originally surnamed Mitrani, she was raised in the Bronx, New York. Her father, Maurice Morris (né Mitrani), was a clothing manufacturer. She moved to California with her parents in 1946. Morrison went on to study acting at Los Angeles City College and landed early film roles in Divorce American Style and How to Save a Marriage (And Ruin Your Life).

Her most widely recognizable recent role has been as the Salvadoran maid Rosario Inez Consuelo Yolanda Salazar in the NBC comedy television series Will & Grace, which she played from 1999 to 2006. The role was originally created for a brief one-episode appearance, but Rosario was so popular with viewers that the character became a regular. In addition to sparring with her libertine and very spoiled employer, Karen Walker, played by Megan Mullally, the Rosario storyline has also allowed her to marry the gay Jack McFarland, played by Sean Hayes, in a marriage of convenience designed to prevent her impending deportation.

In approximately 25 film appearances and 200 television appearances, Morrison has portrayed a maid or housekeeper on 32 separate occasions (including on Soap, Columbo and the film Troop Beverly Hills). Morrison had just recently informed her agent not to offer her any more "maid parts" when the call for Will & Grace came in.

[edit] Battle with cancer

A bout with breast cancer in 1988 forced her to undergo a lumpectomy, and when the cancer recurred in 1998 she underwent a full mastectomy. She also has battled lung cancer and underwent surgery which removed the upper third of her right lung. She lives with her husband of many years, Walter Domínguez, a Mexican-American, in a three-story apartment in Los Angeles - the same apartment in which her father had settled the family into five decades earlier. Morrison and Dominguez have no children of their own.

Morrison revealed that she was diagnosed with lung cancer in recent years, but that she is now in remission. However her breast cancer, for which she was treated in 1988 and 1998, has returned.