John Leguizamo Quotes

You know, I am kind of a bi-polarish schitzerphrenic. I run the gamut of being incredibly shy and withdrawn to being a crazy-eccentric exhibitionist. And I have always been like that.

Is there a God? Yeah, but there's not just one God. There's a whole lot of gods, because one God couldn't have possibly made so many mistakes all by Himself. This had to be done by committee.

At Murry Bergtraum High I wanted to be as different from my father as possible. So I acted out in school, I was very anti-authority.

Self-expression, to me, is something that you worked on, that you have mastered a skill to say something in the most artful way that you can. It's not just blurting stuff out and having verbal diarrhea.

Marriage is wild. I thought it was this perfect land of happiness and joy. Wrong! After you say you do, you don't for a long time.

Most of the great directors I've worked with - De Palma, Spike Lee - like rehearsals.

I had to work with Ben Mendelsohn who's one of the great actors of our time. I had a lot of scenes with him and I was thrilled to be on the set with him; I just wanted to see how we were going to play it.

Don't confuse the beginning of my world with the breakup of yours.

People can be anonymous when they go on blogs and say crazy things that they would never have the courage to say to your face.

I wasn't even in a theater because I guess nobody believed in me, so I was in the hallway of a theater on a platform that they would move so the main stage show could go on at eight o'clock and I'd be gone.

The beautiful thing about acting is that you can go your whole life if you stay current and you stay fresh.

Independent film is for actors that love to act.

I did an HBO movie called Undefeated that I directed. It was too hard.

Well I was about to be expelled from school, I had been arrested and a teacher said: "Why don't you try acting, instead of distracting the class? Why don't you use your comic talent for something more productive?" My maths teacher suggested I do comedy and I decided to have a go. I pursued it after that. I was about 17.

You just want to go off and be intuitive and wild, and that's what Bryan Cranston brings to the game.

Rehearsals make a huge difference.

Great acting is being able to create a character. Great character is being able to be yourself.

America may not realize it yet, but Latin prototypes are being created right now, and not just by me. They are these mambo kings and salsa queens, Aztec lords and Inca princesses, every Hernandez and Fernandez, whom this country will one day come to understand and respect.

I have a lot of heroes. I don't think people give enough of a tribute to their mentors. They try to act like they're spontaneous generations - they are faking liars.

I did the bible as told through Hispanic people and they laughed and applauded. I thought, "Oh my god, this is what I want to do for the rest of my life."

It might have been really cool back in the '50s when it was less populated but I don't know.

To be a comedian, you gotta jokesmith, there's no way around it.

Very, that show is crazy. It was like doing finals every week. It was interesting. I really learned a lot. The dialogue is so technical. I was so impressed watching the other actors and how they managed, so I studied them. And I was blown away thinking: "How do they do that? How do they put that extra spin on the complicated dialogue to make it interesting?

Bryan Cranston is generous, he's funny. When we did a wedding scene [in The Infiltrator ], at the end of the movie with a big set piece, he put the veil off the bride, he put it on, he pretended like we were getting married, he's just a goof.

It's all about respect; he's looking for respect from his buddies. In the last one he just wanted to hang out, to be part of the group, but this time he wants more from his friends. And without giving the story away, he finally gets something that he has been looking for when the mini sloths kidnap him and take him to their tribal area. He gets to be the Fire King and they worship him and there is an amazing scene with a "call and response" sequence in the style of Cab Callow [the legendary American jazz singer and band leader] between him and his audience.

It's not quite the same as other kinds of performing, but I love animation. It is just a different kind of experience. The difference is that making a live action movie you are using your whole body.

The more times you do something, the more likely it is you're going to get it wrong.

I love life, man, and I embrace every minute of it so maybe I bring that on the set. I love people and I want to have a good time.

I'd be terrified even now for a Latin kid wanting to be an actor, but back then? Forget it. They must have thought I was going to be working in restaurants and driving cabs for the rest of my life.

I think as you mature as an actor things open up to you in a lot of ways, especially if you do work on yourself.

There were no Latin people on 'Star Trek,' that this was proof that they weren't planning to have us around for the future.

Bryan Cranston has got such an incredible light touch. He comes in egoless, but with bold opinions, and he wants to play. He wants to play. And that's what I've seen in great actors all my life and what I've always tried to nurture and keep in myself is that joy of playing.

It was at a performance art space that's no longer around, Gusto House... All of these great performers from all over the country lived on the Lower East Side, and they would take somebody's living room that opened right onto the street, open the door and charge tickets and put up chairs.

At Murry Bergtraum [High School] if you were really funny you sat at this table at with all of the funniest dudes, the toughest, the coolest - everybody sat at that table. It was like the ghetto Algonquin Round Table. [Comedy] was my entry, my membership card.

I wanted to enjoy the process. I wanted to enjoy just being on stage and giving back and the feedback.

It's the flip side of illegal success. This man [Pablo Escobar ] turned a small-time drug thing into a large industry. An international, successful industry. And he almost took a country, Columbia, he took it almost hostage, took over it. It was incredible.

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.

In Moulin Rouge I could not change the name of Toulouse-Lautrec obviously to Toulouse-Lautrec- Martinez. But in ER I did that, my name is Dr Victor Clemente, so sometimes it is possible.

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.

The thing I gravitated to was being the class clown. It was very competitive.

t is for me because I needed to do this. I really think actors shouldn't act unless they really need it in their lives. I think it has to be something that is so much a part of your chemistry, such a passion, that you can't live without it. You should not do it just because you are seeking fame or want to get rich.

I love cartoons. So when they came to me to make Ice Age and this sequel, I was so happy.

I had my neck hurt for like five years, I could barely move my neck from doing this stunt, I almost died twice doing stunts, it's really dangerous.

I gotta tell, that's one of the things in Hollywood that has not been a barrier. I've gotten lots of offers, and I did try my hand at it, I directed two commercials. I won best commercial of ad week [laughs] on my first try.

Latins for Republicans. It's like roaches for Raid.

I'm not really against a lot of things unless they are just pure exploitation and then they create their own copycat culture that comes from someone acting irresponsibly. That's dangerous when that happens.

I was always writing. I was writing in high school because it was a really competitive school for class clowns; I used to have to write all of my snaps and my disses the night before and then act like I was making it up the next day.

But when you are doing an animated voice, it has to have more energy than usual or it falls flat and doesn't work. For myself, I found that I had to put myself in the same physical or emotional state as Sid, in order to make that voice sound alive and authentic. So if there was a scene in which he was running, I would be running beforehand to sound out of breath. That's important because the audience can tell intuitively if it does not sound real.