…but Luis is never really far away
It’s actually hard to avoid him. Last night he had some key, hilarious scenes in the USA primetime rebroadcast of He’s Just Not That Into You. Earlier this week, you could glimpse his life-sized statue on NBC’s Community. And Arthur is now available on DVD; you can even watch it instantly on Amazon. And he’s got half a dozen new projects in production right now, alongside his great work in HBO’s How to Make It in America, Sunday nights at 10:30P.
But that’s the thing about Luis Guzmán: he works. For more than twenty-five years, this talented Latino has appeared in more than a hundred different movies and television shows, including a (regrettably) short-lived series of his own, Luis, back in 2003.
He’s played serious (and frequently terrifying) regulars in Oz and the John Travolta remake of The Taking of Pelham 123; he’s done dramady like John from Cincinnati, and broad comedy like Beverly Hills Chihuahua (he was the voice of Chucho). And that’s just the beginning.
Luis Guzmán is the master of the cameo. You see his memorably squashed face and deepset eyes all over the place, from Jim Carrey’s Yes Man to Tim Allen’s Old Dogs. And as we said, he’s even the statue on the lawn at Greendale College in NBC’s comedy series Community–a regular appearance in a cameo where he doesn’t even have to be there. And of course he made quite an impression last year in Arthur, where–among other things–he found himself becoming the world’s first Latino representation of Robin, the Boy Wonder.
Guzmán is the definition of a working Latino actor: out there all the time, boots on the ground, doing what comes his way and a little bit more, hitting his marks and moving on, then pausing to do some really quality work like America or Pelham. America’s number one Latino working actor.
It’s a shame How to Make it in America is on opposite Against the Wall and CSI: Miami, but really–this is HBO. It’s on again a couple of hours after it’s 10:30P premiere, and again a couple of hours after that, and multiple times on Monday, Tuesday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, before the next new episode. Just keep checking in and you’re bound to catch Luis–if not there, in half a hundred other things. After all, that’s who he is: Latino Hollywood working actor.
