John Leguizamo Quotes

Well, when I came to Hollywood, there were three names really of Latin actors, three or four names, maybe five. There was Raul Julia, Edward James Olmos, Andy Garcia, Antonio Banderas, Jimmy Smits. Now there's a lot.

If what I read doesn't reflect my life - whether I'm gay or Latino or on welfare - doesn't that really mean that my life is not valuable?

I always thought that when I got into this business that I was going to have to downplay my Asianness and downplay my queerness, which is not an easy thing for me to do.

When you never see yourself in the mainstream format, you are stripped of the strength of your identity.

If you were to turn on the TV in 1986, '87, you wouldn't see anybody having, I guess, a low-to-middle-income person of color experience. And you definitely wouldn't have a young LGBT person or their story told. The experience of being invisible in our culture has ramifications that I don't think any of us can really understand.

There are so many reality shows on now where they want you to be crazy, the girls are just going bananas; you know how they portray brown girls. They portray us in a different type of light.

I never thought I would get such a perfect role in 'Modern Family.' A lot of TV shows now are looking for more Latin women.

Watching 'Girls,' it was really angering for me at first, because I really had spent decades hiding unlikable, unattractive Jewish girls in likable, attractive, non-Jewish actors and characters.

I never had the opportunity to play a Latino character that is seen in a heroic, smart way.

There's a lot of Latinos right now, a lot of filmmakers and writers that are Latin too.

'Instructions Not Included' is proving that there is a huge Latin market that needs a special project. They love seeing their own people; they want to see themselves onscreen. In my case, I know them pretty well. I know what they laugh at. I think it's going to open a lot of doors, this movie.

It's hard for the American industry to see a Latin actor playing something that is not a gardener or someone in a cartel. It's hard to find the material that tells a story of a Latin or European Spanish guy that is not a bad guy.

If a casting breakdown said 'All-American Type' or 'Lead Role,' I knew they weren't thinking of me.

I'd love to do some period pieces and some historic work; I just feel like no one's tapped into Latin history and Latin contributions to the making of America, and we've been there over 500 years.

I got sort of sick of seeing Asians being the blank, bland real estate agent or something. I didn't care. It didn't mean anything to me.

Asians narratively in shows are insignificant. They're the cop or the waitress or whatever it is. You see them in the background.

We need a lot more positive Latin role models in movies and in television. They exist! It's not fiction.

You just don't see Muslims being matter-of-fact Muslim. They're always defined by their Muslim-ness. We're either terrorists, or we're fighting terrorists. I remember seeing 'True Lies' and going, 'Why are we always the bad guys?'

We've all been watching stories about heterosexuals forever... As a gay kid, you are always having to translate. You are always having to pretend like you are one of the other characters. You're not seeing your life accurately reflected.

The truth is, for me, when I was a young black girl who knew I was different, was watching TV, I would always be staring at the TV set looking for myself, and I didn't see me. And when you don't see yourself, you start to think that you don't matter, or you start to think that something is wrong with you.

The big, radical thing that I'm trying to do is to portray Latinas as complex human beings.

I was a mixed black girl existing in a westernized Hawaiian culture where petite Asian women were the ideal, in a white culture where black women were furthest from the standard of beauty, in an American culture where trans women of color were invisible.

It's fair to say that black folks operate under a cloud of invisibility - this too is part of the work, is indeed central to [my photographs]... This invisibility - this erasure out of the complex history of our life and time - is the greatest source of my longing.

As black women, we're miles behind our white counterparts in being offered the space to create and craft female characters in major blockbuster films.

When you go to an art museum, the thing you're least likely to encounter is a picture of a black person. When it comes to ideas about art and about beauty, the black figure is absent.