Cheech Marin
Cheech Marin
Richard Anthony "Cheech" Marinis an American comedian, actor, voice actor and writer who gained recognition as part of the comedy act Cheech & Chong during the 1970s and early 1980s with Tommy Chong, and as Don Johnson's partner, Insp. Joe Dominguez, on Nash Bridges. He has also voiced characters in several Disney productions, including Oliver & Company, The Lion King, It's Tough to Be a Bug!, Cars, Cars 2 and Beverly Hills Chihuahua...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionMovie Actor
Date of Birth13 July 1946
CityLos Angeles, CA
CountryUnited States of America
Being a Chicano in Hollywood, my experience is that you're not given credit for any sophistication... You're just kind of some guy that just crossed the border, you know, on the back of a truck and that's it.
Yeah, I'm the go-to guy for Mexican priests.
Rich white guys. That's the true minority.
To do a comedy team, it requires so much extracurricular stuff, so much compromise, so much intuitiveness to know what the other guy is doing. That's why it's so hard to do it.
By the time I discovered Chicano painters in the mid-'80s, I recognized that these guys were really world-class painters, but they weren't getting any attention, which was good in one sense in that I could get their work for cheaper!
I'm the go-to guy for Mexican priests. I'm the new Barry Fitzgerald, except with a Mexican accent.
We just got sick of each other. We'd been together 17 years. We just kind of didn't want to listen to each other anymore. We both wanted to go our separate ways.
I've never seen a NASCAR race; I've seen an Indianapolis 500 race.
It was about taking the show and shining a different light on it. Each monologue was like a separate jewel that I helped thread into a necklace.
Born in St. Petersburg, Russia, my wife speaks five languages: Russian, English, French, Italian and, out of self-defense, Spanish. I watched her learn Spanish in three months.
I've always wanted to be able to say that I come from Los Angeles, California and feel quintessentially American - even if I said that in Spanish.
At the end of the day, it not only doesn't make logical sense to deny licenses to undocumented immigrants, it doesn't make financial sense.
I was part of the draft resistance movement in L.A. where we did demonstrations at the draft centre and burned our cards and made a lot of trouble on campus. I had a student classification and they said that anybody who'd taken part in these demonstrations would be reclassified and drafted. And that's when I went to Canada.
Whether it's from the biggest, most powerful city, or from the dinkiest little podunk town, there is a certain attachment and connection, and yes, pride about where you came from.