John Leguizamo Says He Avoided the Sun ‘For Years’ to Stay Light-Skinned for Hollywood Roles
variety.comZack Sharf John Leguizamo revealed in a conversation with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences that he made a deliberate choice in his career to stay out of the sun in order to continue booking roles as a light-skinned Latino actor.
The actor said he has long “benefitted from being light-skinned” in Hollywood and addressed issues of colorism within Hollywood and within Latin culture.“I stayed out of the sun so I could work,” Leguizamo said. “I definitely would not go in the sun for years.
It was a conscious thing because I could work. And all the Latinos that made it so far, a lot of them were all light-skinned.
What happened to all the Afro-Latinos and the majority of indigenous Latinos? They don’t get a shot, you know. So, there’s a lot of things we got to deal with in Hollywood, and we got to fix, and we got to speak out and we got to speak up.” Leguizamo also reacted to last year’s Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, which looked at the 1,300 top-grossing films from 2007 to 2019 and found that only 7% of films from 2019 featured a lead/co-lead Hispanic/Latino actor.“Not only are we invisible, but when we are seen, it’s a negative portrayal,” Leguizamo said. “Things are improving.
Read more on variety.com