Story and video by HuffPost Live
Actor John Leguizamo joined HuffPost Live Tuesday and explained why he started acting as a Latin man.
Leguizamo: “I’m watching TV, and I’m watching movies, and listening to the radio and like, we’re [Latinos] invisible. And I was like, where are all the Latin people that I hang out with, goof with all day, and talk about politics, and talk about art? Where are these characters? Where are these people? So, I started writing my own stuff. Because I wanted to see my people the way I saw them.”
He then described what it feels like to be a Latin student in American high schools.
Leguizamo: “I read this statistic that 45% of Latin kids drop out of high school. And I totally get that! We’re not taught anything that we contributed to this country and we’ve been around for 500 years in this country! We were in the Revolutionary War, we had generals in the Revolutionary War, we had 10,000 Latin people fight in the Civil War. No one ever tells you about that! … We were at all these events in huge numbers and you just never hear about any of our participation except sort of Trumpisms.”
WATCH CLIP HERE: http://huff.lv/1IDUQj6
Leguizamo also shared why he thinks Hollywood has such a disparity in actor diversity.
Leguizamo: “It’s totally a studio fear. A studio run by people who are afraid of losing their jobs and live in a very apartheid LA. LA is very South Africa. I’ve been to South Africa and it reminds me of LA because white people live in one area, Black people like in one area, and Latin people live in another area. And the only time I get to see my people is when I’m going to restaurants, or if somebody is valeting the car. It’s very weird. And very wrong!”
WATCH CLIP HERE: http://huff.lv/1gxrGZf
Watch the full HuffPost Live interview John Leguizamo here.
