On a national level there is a tendency to portray Latino culture as a monolithic entity, which is a really inaccurate way of seeing ourselves. There is as much diversity and uniqueness within the Latino culture as there is in any other kind of American culture.

I think there's a settled quality, there's a gravitas that comes with aging and with being a parent because you certainly come to recognize that there's nothing else that takes greater priority than raising your children.

The whole thing about acting, the draw for me, is the opportunity to do things you don't get to do in real life.

I think all actors are on the constant search for a real challenge just to keep things interesting.

Just be loving. You also have to recognize that you need to take the focus off yourself and put it on your children to give them a proper start in life.

I've made a career over the last seventeen years of mostly playing men in uniform, especially cops. The one thing for an actor that is completely death is if you're bored, because that boredom will show in your work. So there was an inherent challenge in trying to keep it fresh, because it's something that I'm familiar with, but the real draw for me was at long last to work with Halle. She and I had come close to working on two other films together prior to this one that unfortunately had fallen apart for various reasons.

Part of my aspiration as a film actor is to bring subtlety to everything I do - honesty but subtlety.