My parents had a difficult divorce. My dad had to take a backseat for a few years, and my grandfather came in. He was also my inspiration for becoming an actor. I really respected him.
If you're going to do Shakespeare, do Shakespeare. There's a reason why he's been performed for hundreds of years. His words affect people on a very deep level. He's the true humanist. That all comes through his text, his words.
My parents had a difficult divorce.
There's something about my Mexican-American heritage... I'm proud of it.
I've played Hamlet and Coriolanus, Orlando in 'As You like It' and Ariel in 'Tempest,' among others.
I see theater as a simple formula. Audience plus players plus story makes the play.
For reasons I don't fully understand, tragic love has a certain appeal.
Shakespeare gives you these clues - these little pieces of gold dust, I call them. They tell you so much about the story, the character, the drive, the intentions. It's like a gift.
Actors are the most generous people when it comes to sharing their technique. But if you grew up in a household of carpenters, and you're making a table, everyone would have a different way of doing it.
Sometimes, there's a preconceived notion of how a scene or how a work should be delivered. And I see young performers sometimes try and deliver that, and it's not really true to their voice or who they are.
When you are cast for a role, it's because of everything that makes you who you are in that moment in time. No one else has that. That's a unique, powerful thing to hold.
Juilliard is wonderful in that they don't pick just one way of working. They give you a palette. There is method acting. There is a lot of attention to Shakespeare and verse.
Any part I do is a marriage of the words - what the playwright or producer or show runner's vision is - to how I would play it. It took me a while to get rid of 'Oh, they want it this way, so I'm going to do it how they want it.'
No matter where we are or how advanced we think we are, there are elemental issues of our civilization that stories help us work through.
