John Leguizamo Lights Up Broadway in "Ghetto Klown," His One-Man Show

After nearly two full days of practicing, Imus was still inept at pronouncing John Leguizamo’s last name, despite numerous valiant attempts. It turns out Leguizamo is equally unskilled in that endeavor after almost 47 years, admitting to Imus today, “I usually get an aneurysm trying to say my own name.”
 
Leguizamo, an actor who has appeared in such movies as “Moulin Rouge,” “William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet,” and “Dr. Doolittle,” is currently appearing on Broadway in his third one-man show, Ghetto Klown, which he wrote himself.
 
“This one is like a documentary about my life, except it’s a play,” he said, and explained what he enjoys about the stage as opposed to movie sets. “Broadway is beautiful, man! You have the crowds out there, and you feel that vibe, and the energy, and you get them screaming and yelling. And when I do some poignant stuff or stuff that moves them, they get quiet.”
 
He added, “You feel that control and that power—it’s incredible. You can’t replicate that.”
 
As for why he chose to write about his own life in Ghetto Klown, which is playing at The Lyceum Theatre, Leguizamo said, “They say to write what you know, so I wrote about myself.” He likened the two-and-a-half hour show to a therapy session, in which he discusses his life’s failures, battles, and fights, along with the good stuff.
 
Growing up poor in Jackson Heights, Queens, Leguizamo started making trouble early on. “I got arrested on the subway trying to do my comedy,” he told Imus. “I broke into the conductor’s booth. I was trying to be funny.”
 
After he was almost expelled from school for acting out, Leguizamo finally got on the right track when a math teacher, after noting that his unruly pupil had “the attention span of a sperm,” suggested Leguizamo turn his energy toward acting.
 
“I started taking classes, and worked on my speech,” he said, still carrying a noticeable Queens brogue. Within two years, he landed a part on the TV series “Miami Vice,” his performance on which he described as, “I was a punk. I was terrible. I sucked.”
 
But, he got an agent out of it, and 30 years later Leguizamo is still thriving in a business where longevity is anything but guaranteed. He waxes rhapsodic about his lengthy career in Ghetto Klown, particularly some of the more colorful characters he’s worked with like Kurt Russell, Steven Seagal, and Al Pacino.
 
Acting alongside Pacino in “Carlito’s Way,” Leguizamo played a young drug dealer trying to take out an old, powerful drug dealer. “I was so impressed working with him that I wanted to show him that I was as good as him,” he said of Pacino.
 
So, Leguizamo would come up with insane, unscripted dialogue, causing Pacino to lecture him, “Just be yourself, John—do less!” Though Leguizamo protested that if he did any less, he wouldn’t even be acting, Pacino roundly cut him off.
 
“He was like, ‘Hooah!’” Leguizamo recalled.
 
-Julie Kanfer