John Leguizamo

John Leguizamo
John Alberto Leguizamo is a Colombian-American actor, voice actor, producer, stand-up comedian, playwright and screenwriter. As of 2009, Leguizamo has appeared in over 75 films, produced over 10 films, starred on Broadway in several productions, made over a dozen television appearances, and has produced or starred in many other television shows...
NationalityColombian
ProfessionComedian
Date of Birth22 July 1964
CountryColombia
new-york thinking voice
It used to be trained professionals doing animation and they were great. Now they have celebrities and famous actors doing the voices, but that does not always work. But I think this film turned out really well, partly because the three of us (me, Ray and Denis) are comedians who are used to doing solo acts and doing certain types of voices. The three of us are New York guys, we all came up the same way in the profession and we are all edgy and enjoy doing family movies. It was a good combination I think.
moving voice sloth
Sid is a prehistoric sloth. Sloths move really slowly and they store food in the cheek pouches. That's where I got the voice that you hear. He had to sound as though he was storing food.
character talking voice
I did 40 voices for Chris Wedge, the director of the first film, before coming up with the version we used. He was hard to please, I don't know why. I gave him really slow talking voices. then I thought perhaps Sid could be an Indian sounding sloth. To find out more about my character, I watched footage of sloths. I discovered that the food they store in their pouches rots and ferments and half the time they're drunk.
phones talking voice
I walked around my apartment with food in my mouth asking myself: "How do I come up with this voice?" Then I found the voice. I called the director and said on the phone: "Guess who you're talking to Chris? Sid, that's right Sid!" And that's how I came up with the voice. That's a true story.
morning voice littles
I had to get the voice back, the precise pitch of Sid's voice and I'd forgotten that I'd pitched him higher than my regular voice, so that was a little difficult to begin with. It was especially hard because we started recording in the morning so I had to warm up a lot and my usual voice is a little more gravelly.
hard-work names voice
Voices come to me but to maintain them is hard work. They go away just as easily, so I have to remember them and that takes work. With Sid, I needed to make sure you could understand what he is saying, his enunciation. Sometimes I couldn't even say my own name [his name] in his voice. It sounds like 'Shid', it sounds a bit like he has a lisp.
bouncing comedy expelled kid since walls
I've been bouncing off the walls since childhood. Expelled from school. In trouble. Kid with no future. Comedy was the only answer.
dad loser loves poet
Every dad who loves his daughter is not going to want her to go with the penniless slacker loser poet bum, when she could go out with someone who's successful.
ahead career character cover feeds hit life living local love month morning point reporter research spanish ton traveled tv work
a ton of research -- more than I've ever done before for anything. I've hit this point in my career where I just love doing research. It's what feeds me -- going and living the life of my character -- so for this I went to Ecuador a month or two ahead to work on my Spanish and get the feel for the place. I also traveled around with this local TV reporter who was doing the same thing Manolo does, and every morning we'd go to the morgue to cover murders.
type work
When you're that type of personality and come into any work environment,
came early mother
My mother came in early in the process,
brilliant cop familiar genre john move movies taking turning urban western
I was familiar with that and 'Rio Bravo.' 'Rio Bravo' was what John Carpenter did, that brilliant move of taking a western and turning it into an urban flick. And from there you got, you know, all the cop genre movies of the time.
came crew encouraged night
Yeah, that came out of a reading. It was great. It's such a fun crew to be with, and we all went out the night before and that really encouraged us to go out and get drunk.
bitten hollywood people stay zombie
If I was in Hollywood and I got bitten by a zombie, I would want to stay a zombie and then take down as many people as I could,