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
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,
hard-work personality trying
It's been great, I have to dig deep for really raw emotions and at the same time I have to use my intellect to say the ridiculous medical jargon while acting and treating a patient and then I have to try to have a personality and emotions as well. So it is definitely hard work.
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.
thinking work-ethic acting
Yes it did really. It was very exciting to find that my energy could be directed into something more useful and positive. I was starting to get panicked. I was thinking 'what am I going to do with my life?' I wasn't sure what was going to happen. Then I became crazily obsessed with acting. I suddenly had a work ethic and then everything changed completely for the better because I knew what I wanted to do with my life.
great-work
That's the happiest I am, when I'm doing great work.
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.
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,
breaking rules script
There are just so many intellectual things with the script that aren't normal, ... breaking all the rules, and it still works.
acting character drives looking type
It's always the same thing that drives me -- a type of character or personality that I've never done before, or that allows me to try out some new acting technique. So I'm always experimenting and looking for that interesting hook.