John Leguizamo Quotations | Page 2

I love cartoons. So when they came to me to make Ice Age and this sequel, I was so happy.

People can be anonymous when they go on blogs and say crazy things that they would never have the courage to say to your face.

I wanted to enjoy the process. I wanted to enjoy just being on stage and giving back and the feedback.

Voices come to me but to maintain them is hard work. They go away just as easily, so I have to remember them and that takes work. With Sid, I needed to make sure you could understand what he is saying, his enunciation. Sometimes I couldn't even say my own name [his name] in his voice. It sounds like 'Shid', it sounds a bit like he has a lisp.

I had to get the voice back, the precise pitch of Sid's voice and I'd forgotten that I'd pitched him higher than my regular voice, so that was a little difficult to begin with. It was especially hard because we started recording in the morning so I had to warm up a lot and my usual voice is a little more gravelly.

Teachers are everything. I mean, you're a poor kid from the ghetto, your parents are busy working 24/7, working like a Mexican.

It's all about respect; he's looking for respect from his buddies. In the last one he just wanted to hang out, to be part of the group, but this time he wants more from his friends. And without giving the story away, he finally gets something that he has been looking for when the mini sloths kidnap him and take him to their tribal area. He gets to be the Fire King and they worship him and there is an amazing scene with a "call and response" sequence in the style of Cab Callow [the legendary American jazz singer and band leader] between him and his audience

I walked around my apartment with food in my mouth asking myself: "How do I come up with this voice?" Then I found the voice. I called the director and said on the phone: "Guess who you're talking to Chris? Sid, that's right Sid!" And that's how I came up with the voice. That's a true story.

I did 40 voices for Chris Wedge, the director of the first film, before coming up with the version we used. He was hard to please, I don't know why. I gave him really slow talking voices. then I thought perhaps Sid could be an Indian sounding sloth. To find out more about my character, I watched footage of sloths. I discovered that the food they store in their pouches rots and ferments and half the time they're drunk.

Sid is a prehistoric sloth. Sloths move really slowly and they store food in the cheek pouches. That's where I got the voice that you hear. He had to sound as though he was storing food.

I'm not really against a lot of things unless they are just pure exploitation and then they create their own copycat culture that comes from someone acting irresponsibly. That's dangerous when that happens.

It used to be trained professionals doing animation and they were great. Now they have celebrities and famous actors doing the voices, but that does not always work. But I think this film turned out really well, partly because the three of us (me, Ray and Denis) are comedians who are used to doing solo acts and doing certain types of voices. The three of us are New York guys, we all came up the same way in the profession and we are all edgy and enjoy doing family movies. It was a good combination I think.

But when you are doing an animated voice, it has to have more energy than usual or it falls flat and doesn't work. For myself, I found that I had to put myself in the same physical or emotional state as Sid, in order to make that voice sound alive and authentic. So if there was a scene in which he was running, I would be running beforehand to sound out of breath. That's important because the audience can tell intuitively if it does not sound real.

It's not quite the same as other kinds of performing, but I love animation. It is just a different kind of experience. The difference is that making a live action movie you are using your whole body.

Definitely if you're an athlete, you're gonna be having all the baseball fame you can have. That's the great thing about baseball and sports. You can measure ability.

Very, that show is crazy. It was like doing finals every week. It was interesting. I really learned a lot. The dialogue is so technical. I was so impressed watching the other actors and how they managed, so I studied them. And I was blown away thinking: "How do they do that? How do they put that extra spin on the complicated dialogue to make it interesting?

It's been great, I have to dig deep for really raw emotions and at the same time I have to use my intellect to say the ridiculous medical jargon while acting and treating a patient and then I have to try to have a personality and emotions as well. So it is definitely hard work.

t is for me because I needed to do this. I really think actors shouldn't act unless they really need it in their lives. I think it has to be something that is so much a part of your chemistry, such a passion, that you can't live without it. You should not do it just because you are seeking fame or want to get rich.

Self-expression, to me, is something that you worked on, that you have mastered a skill to say something in the most artful way that you can. It's not just blurting stuff out and having verbal diarrhea.

I was just school class clown and that was it. Someday I'll get a job as a cab driver or whatever.

I'm just more comfortable with people who are like me than the people who are not.

The message is one of the beautiful things about the film. And I think part of the appeal is simply that they are prehistoric creatures, they are no longer around and that makes them magical and makes us feel quite emotional, because we know that those creatures did not survive in the long run, so there's poignancy in their fight for survival.

I think as you mature as an actor things open up to you in a lot of ways, especially if you do work on yourself.

I love theater. I think theater, when its done right, is the best, like a religious experience. When it is done badly, it's the worst thing. It's just an incredible experience.

I like helping people achieve their dreams just like people helped me.

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

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.