John Alberto Leguizamo Peláez (/ˌlɛɡwɪˈzɑːmoʊ/; Colombian Spanish: [leɣiˈsamo]; born July 22, 1960[1]13:04) is an American actor, comedian, and film producer. He has appeared in over 100 films, produced over 20 films and documentaries, made over 30 television appearances, and has produced various television projects. He's also written and performed for the Broadway stage receiving three Tony Award nominations for Freak in 1998, Sexaholix in 2002, and Latin History for Morons in 2018. He received a Special Tony Award in 2018.
He rose to fame with a co-starring role in Super Mario Bros. (1993) as Luigi, Benny Blanco in the crime drama Carlito's Way (1993), and later To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar (1995), for which he received a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor nomination. Other films include Romeo + Juliet (1996), A Brother's Kiss (1997), Summer of Sam (1999), Moulin Rouge! (2001), The Alibi (2006), Righteous Kill (2008), Repo Men (2010), The Counselor (2013), John Wick (2014), and The Menu (2022). He served as the narrator of the sitcom The Brothers García (2000–2004) and voiced Sid the Sloth in the Ice Age franchise (2002–2016),[2] and as Bruno in Encanto (2021).
Leguizamo is also known for his television roles including Freak (1998) for which he received the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Individual Performance in a Variety or Music Program.[3] He received further Primetime Emmy Award nominations for the Paramount miniseries Waco (2018), and Netflix's limited series When They See Us (2019). He's also appeared on ER, The Kill Point, Bloodline, and The Mandalorian.[4]
Early life
Leguizamo was born in Bogotá, Colombia, on July 22, 1960, the son of Luz Marina Peláez and Alberto Rudolfo Leguizamo.[1] His father was once an aspiring film director and studied at Cinecittà, but eventually dropped out due to lack of finances.[5] According to Leguizamo, his surname is of Basque origin and he has distant Basque roots.[6]
Research by the genealogy show Finding Your Roots indicated that Leguizamo does not have Puerto Rican, Italian, and Lebanese ancestry, as he has sometimes stated.[1][7][8][9][10] His family is Colombian, and a DNA test found that his genetic ancestry includes European (mostly Spanish), along with Indigenous and distant African roots.[1] His paternal grandfather was a wealthy Colombian landowner, and his great-great-grandfather, Higinio Cualla, was Mayor of Bogotá for sixteen years in the late 1800s, and was considered an important modernizer of the city.[1] Leguizamo had always declared that he was Puerto Rican on his father's side, which was one of the reasons he was selected as the Puerto Rican Day Parade Global Ambassador of the Arts,[11] and marched in the parade on June 12, 2011.[12] Going further back in time, it was determined that Leguizamo's maternal lineage includes the 16th-century Spanish conquistador Sebastián de Belalcázar, as well as Jerónimo Betuma, a 17th-century indigenous Colombian of noble birth.
When Leguizamo was a child, his family immigrated to New York City,[13] where they lived in various neighborhoods in Queens, including Jackson Heights.[9][14] He later credited growing up as one of the first Latino children in the neighborhood as formative in his acting ability: "It was tough. There were lots of fights. I would walk through a park and be attacked, and I had to defend myself all the time. But this helped me to become funny so that I wouldn't get hit."[15] Leguizamo attended the Joseph Pulitzer Middle School (I.S.145) and later the Murry Bergtraum High School. As a student at Murry Bergtraum, he wrote comedy material and tested it on his classmates. He was voted "Most Talkative" by his classmates. After graduating from high school, he began his theater career as an undergraduate at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, from which he eventually dropped out in favor of a career in stand-up comedy. Post-NYU, Leguizamo enrolled at LIU Post and at HB Studio,[16] where he took theater classes.
