John Leguizamo Quotes - Page 3

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 would be jokesmithing. I had files with tons of disses that I would try to write as I was on the train going to school.

First I went to C.W. Post and I was a psychology and theater major and then I transferred to NYU's Tisch School of the Arts as a drama major.

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 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.

The New York Times made you or broke you.

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 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.

[Brad Furman] is incredibly collaborative, man. He's so respectful of talent, he has so much admiration for talent. He nurtures you, he lets you give input. Of course we'll debate if we disagree, that's just a healthy atmosphere to air your differences.

[Brad Furman] wants to try stuff, he's willing to try stuff. And he wants electricity on the camera. And that's what I want, I want electricity whenever I'm performing.

I really love it, I love working with directors that are very collaborative and allow me input. I've done over 75 films, it's just like you're an apprentice. You learn so much about camerawork, lenses, and I'm always talking about DPs and directors and they always give me lists. I think pretty soon, I'll be ready to move away from being in front of the camera.

I had a whole new respect for directors.

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

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.

The difficulty of being a Latin kid, a Latin man in this country [U.S].

I read that 36% of Latin kids drop out of high school, and we're the most bullied minority in schools right now. And my son had troubles in elementary school. So that made me really question being Latin in the United States.

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

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've been hurt so many times I don't have the balls for it anymore.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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