John Leguizamo Quotes

When I started performing I was like, "Holy hell, how am I going to survive this?" I was giving it my all in 15 minutes but now I had to do it for two hours.

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.

I like helping people achieve their dreams just like people helped me.

I love independent films, it's the only place as an actor you're totally allowed to breathe.

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

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 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.

Teachers are everything. I mean, you're a poor kid from the ghetto, your parents are busy working 24/7, working like a Mexican.

It takes time to understand yourself, to go inside yourself and to question yourself and really take yourself to task. That's self-expression.

I keep my kids out of the whole business entirely. Allegra and Lucas are five and six and I'm not interested in them doing any acting at all. I don't want my kids in show business. I keep them as far away from my work as possible.

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

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.

I love theater. I think theater, when its done right, is the best, like a religious experience. When it is done badly, it's the worst thing. It's just an incredible experience.

I don't think it's my responsibility, but I definitely try to create my own projects that are Latin-based with a Latin crew and Latin cast. I try to give all my characters Latin names whenever I can and make sure that they are of Latin heritage. But that does not work with every project.

My parents were incredibly strict, almost military style.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

He wanted to be a lawyer, couldn't afford it, so he started dealing to go to college - good intention.

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.

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.

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.

My mom [comes] to see my shows because she's so proud, but I'm talking about losing my virginity, my ex-wife and our sexual problems, and she's sitting in the front row smiling. I just go, "Mom, you can't sit in the front row, you can't smile. You have to go way in the back and dress in black. If I see you it's like you're breaking in when I'm having sex with my wife. It's just wrong."

It doesn't make sense. [Republicans are] not for us. You're not for my values. We're working class people mostly and blue collar. We're your cops, we're your firemen, we're your carpenters and the things we need - we need to protect our unions, we need to protect our Medicare, we need to protect the working class person.

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.

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.

We are taking our culture and suturing it to America. Like gum on the bottom of a shoe, we are not going to disappear. Unlike other peoples who totally assimilated, we are more interested in co-assimilation.

Some kids are fine, but often I don't like what I see in child actors. My kids are young and they are already showing an interest, so I have to try to discourage them, squash that in them.

Independent film is for actors that love to act.

I love life, and I embrace every minute of it.

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.

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.

I knew Linda Cardellini from when we did ER together - she was always great, such a cool spirit.

I grew up with a lot of cats like that and they always were so surprising, magnetic, and electrifying. You can't be with them too long because they burn you out but the energy, the impulsivity, and the freedom connecting them to their animal energy is just so powerful to watch. It's dangerous to live like that but it's riveting to watch.

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.

He thinks he can use the jail for networking to be somebody. In that way, he's always operating.

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.

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.

Latins for Republicans - it's like roaches for Raid.

Self-expression is something that you've crafted, something that you've found. You've practiced on that piano for hours, you didn't hang out with your buddies, you didn't go after the girls, you stayed in your own little geeky room or you wrote for hours.

You grow up Latin in this country and you're a third class citizen from the word go, and so you have to deal with everything around you from that point of view and trying to feel entitled.

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.

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.

When you feel the world is against you or you give up hope, you look at your heroes and say, "They were able to do it. They had hard times and a lot of opposition, but they got through it." Then you feel, "I can do it too."

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

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

I see the new Latin artist as a pioneer, opening up doors for others to follow. And when they don't open, we crowbar our way in.

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

I'm just more comfortable with people who are like me than the people who are not.

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

The message is one of the beautiful things about the film. And I think part of the appeal is simply that they are prehistoric creatures, they are no longer around and that makes them magical and makes us feel quite emotional, because we know that those creatures did not survive in the long run, so there's poignancy in their fight for survival.

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.

I don't know if tennis players feel like that but when you have a great opponent - although I didn't feel like he [ Ben Mendelsohn ] was an opponent - you just know your game is going to jack up and it's just going to raise the bar. I couldn't wait for that elevation.

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.