PARADE INTERVIEW
I recently came across an article in Parade, the sunday newspaper magazine, about John. He was even the cover photo. Hopefully I can get that up soon. But for now, here is the article.
How being funny turned a self-described "mis-fit" into a cool guy: 'I ENJOY PEOPLE ENJOYING ME'
"When I was growing up, life was really tough," recalled John Leguizamo, 35, the son of Colombian immigrants. "I felt like an invisible person--like all our aspirations, all this joy, this experiance, this contribution to America didn't count. Nobody documented it. I felt a longing to create a legacy, a memory about surviving, about people who made it against the odds."
John Leguizamo came to the United States when he was 4. Despite a troubled childhood, poverty, difficulty in school and petty arrests, he has found remarkable success as an actor and a playwright. Last year he starred in FREAK, the third one-man show he has written based on his memories of his family and other immigrants in New York City. It ran nearly six monthsto sold-out houses on Broadway and earned Tony nominations for Best Actor and Best Play. He has acted in more than 20 films, notably ROMEO & JULIET, with Leonardo DiCaprio; THE FAN, opposite Robert De Niro; and SPAWN, bassed on a comic book, for which he reportedly got $2 million to play an evil clown. He currently stars with Mira Sorvino in Spike Lee's SUMMER OF SAM.
"Without acting, I would have ended up somewhere really messed up," Leguizamo said. "The fact I made it was like a miracle." I visited John Leguizamo in New York City to discover just how that miracle happened.
"My parents came to America with nothing," he told me. "They were really ambitious, always struggling to get ahead, always tired and tense. My parents camehere to work hard and make money. I just wanted to play."
His parents, Alberto and Luz, emigrated from Colombia to New York in 1966, leaving John and his baby brother, Sergio, in Bogotá with their grandparents. A year later, their sons joined them in New York, and the family settled in Jackson Heights, Queens. Alberto worked as a waiter, and Luz was employed in a doll factory. Working long hours, Leguizamo's parents were seldom at home, and the two boys were often left on their own.
"I played by myself or with my brother," he said, "We never saw toys. There was no money, and toys to my parents were like some bizarre waste. First we had a tiny room where all four of us slept in a Murphy bed. We moved every year, and each time it was to someplace a little bigger, a little better. That was the theme of our lives. Each year I was the new kid in a different school, and I'd always lose. I would get made fun of and beat up and have to find my place in the pecking order all over again. I hated my childhood."
Leguizamo paused. "I was scared of my dad," he added. "He was strict and hypercritical and painfully serious and so driven to be successful. He was like a machine. All my weekends and after school, my dad gave me extra homework, and then I had to do chores. But even if you grow up in a stressful environment, there are moments of such beauty. Sometimes when we were watching TV -- Flip Wilson or Carol Burnett or I Love Lucy -- I'd imitate the characters, and my father would crack up. I'd dance along with Soul Train, or run around in my underwear like Tarzan, and my parents would laugh. There would be this relaxed moment. Then tension suddenly would lift. It was like an oasis would appear where these little pockets of affection would come out."
For three summers, beginning when he was 8, Leguizamo's left the city to spend time in the countryside, his trips sponsored by The Fresh Air Fund, a nonprofit agency. "You'd go up there -- Vermont, New Hampshire -- and they're like The Brady Bunch," he recalled. "They treat you really well. There wasn't any fighting. It's all beatific, rustic, cozy." (This year, Leguizamo was named All-American Hero by The Fresh Air Fund.)
When he was 13, Leguizamo's parents went through a rancorous divorce. After the marriage ended, the boys lived with their mother, and John's life began to spin out of control. "All that struggling, disappointment, all that being crushed just destroyed my parents' relantionship," he said, "but it was liberating in a lot of ways for me. The dictatorialness was gone. I was living with my mom now, and my mom couldn't handle me. There was no more boss."
When he was 15, Leguizamo and a friend were arrested for commandeering the public-address system on a subway train and entertaining the bewildered passengers with a comedy routine about their teenage sexual escapades.
"We thought we were being funny," he said. "And all of a sudden two cops handcuffed us, took us to the station. I was shaking like a human vibrator, quaking with fear. My mother comes. She's crying. 'He's my little angel! How could you do that to my angel?" And I start crying because she's crying!"
"I was such a misfit. I just never really fit in anywhere. I was nerdy, but I was too cool to hang out with the nerds. But I wasn't cool enough to be with cool guys. My only value was to make them laugh, to be funny. When the teachers would crack up and laugh with me, it was like breaking down my parents. I loved it. I couldn't stop myself, because I was having too much fun. I was enjoying people enjoying me. I couldn't turn the faucet off. Then the teachers would get angry and send me to the principle's office."
Leguizamo cut classes so often, he once was arrested for truancy. When he was in class, he was hyperactive, ill-disciplined, disruptive and voted "Most Talkative" by his classmates. But he was recognized by his teachers as being verbally gifted and exceptionally bright. When he was 17 and in danger of being expelled for bad behavior from Murry Bergtraum High School, he was persuaded to seek therapy at the Youth Counseling League. It was also then that his math teacher urged him to try acting and stand-up comedy as ways to channel his energy in a positive direction. Leguizamo took his teacher's advice, and it changed his life.
"Some kind of epiphany happened," he said. "I felt I had to change. I was going to be smart no matter what." He picked an acting school from the Yellow Pages -- Slyvia Leigh's Showcase Theatre -- paid the tuition with his wages from Kentucky Fried Chicken and began an actor's life. "All of a sudden I had ambition!" he declared truimphantly. "Acting gave me a goal, a way to focus my energy. I found myself. When I first started acting, people told me to change my name and not to go in the sun, because I'd get dark. Tey told me to fix my accent. It was like blanding, a selling out of yourself. There's a fine line between self-improvement and distancing yourself from what you really are. My writing and my shows are about the culture that nourished me. It's a uniquely Latin culture in America, it's my home."
He was soon accepted into the acting program at New York University. While there, he acted in an award-winning student film, Five Out of Six, which brought him a call from an acting agent that led to three appearences on the TV cop drama Miami Vice in 1984. "It was my first paying gig," he said. "I played a cocaine Mafia prince. I looked like a child, all wet behind the ears." He was on his way.
In 1986, he met Carolyn McDermott, a comedienne, and they dated for five years while doing stand-up in local comedy clubs. It was there that Leguizamo began to create the satirical characters for his first one-man show, Mambo Mouth, which opened off-Broadway in 1990 to critical praise and ran for six months. Spic-O-Rama opened at the Goodman Theatre Studio in Chicago in 1992 and became a hit in New York later that year. Each of his one-man shows, including 1998's Freak, was later filmed and broadcast on HBO. Leguizamo's movie career began with his affecting performance in Brian De Palma's Casualties of War 10 years ago and has continued unabated with a string of wide-ranging character roles.
Following a two-year marriage to Yelba Osario, a waitress and struggling actress, Leguizamo has found what he hopes is lasting love with Justine Maurer, a former estate manager. "We've been together for two years," he said. "She is the greatest person I've ever known. A relationship takes a lot of work, so we try to pay attention to it, guard it, keep it, cherish it. We're going to have a baby! I'm the luckiest man alive!"