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John Leguizamo says one of his early roles left a bad taste in his mouth due to how it perpetuated “negative Latino images.”
The actor, 65, recently appeared on an episode of the Fly on the Wall podcast with Dana Carvey and David Spade, where he delved into his supporting part in Mike Nichols’ 1991 film, Regarding Henry.
Leguizamo played a convenience store robber in the movie, which centered on a lawyer, played by Harrison Ford, who loses his memory after being shot during the crime and struggles to regain his speech and mobility.
Paramount Pictures
“You know, I was kind of humiliated by it,” Leguizamo said of his role in the movie. “I did it because I got no jobs. There were no jobs for Latin folk. There just weren’t.”
He said that, as a Latino actor in the ’90s, “there were no opportunities,” noting that the landscape in Hollywood “was like Jim Crow” at the time.
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“I’m not going to lie. It was like white doctor, white lawyer, white husband, white lover, Latino drug dealer,” he said of the roles available at the beginning of his career.
Leguizamo recalled begging his agents to get him the opportunity to perform his David Mamet monologues in front of casting directors, but was repeatedly told they were not willing to see him.
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“They just want to see great shows, but they just weren’t casting us,” he continued. “When I got Regarding Henry, it was a drug dealer. I shoot this white guy. It was like, I’m perpetuating what they want to see, which is negative Latino images.”
When asked if he was ever told to “Latin it up a little more” for the part, Leguizamo said it was implied.
“They didn’t have to say that to me as much. I was the flavor they were looking for, like a ghetto hoodrat,” he said. “I had been working against that. All my acting teachers, when I was 17, they were like, ‘No one can understand you with that accent. Do you really speak that way?’ ”
While Leguizamo didn’t like the message the part conveyed, he admittedly “really wanted to meet Mike Nichols because he’s one of the greats.”
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“But there I am with my sloppy fro and I’m in the drugstore, I mean in the bodega, and there’s Harrison Ford and I’m robbing the place,” he recalled. “Even talking about it just gives me PTSD.”
In the three decades since starring in Regarding Henry, Leguizamo has been a big advocate for his community, pushing for more representation in films, lobbying for a National Museum of the American Latino, and creating a docuseries, Leguizamo Does America, that shines a spotlight on “Latin excellence.”
