Celebrity3 min(s) read
Published 18:00 27 Jan 2022 GMT
John Leguizamo has revealed that he deliberately avoided the sun in a bid to stay "light-skinned" for acting roles.
The Encanto star - who voices Bruno in Disney's new animated musical - says he "benefitted from being light-skinned" when it comes to landing work as an actor.
In a new interview for the Academy Awards' "Seen" series, Leguizamo is one of the Latinx filmmakers and actors that speak to host Nick Barili about the film industry.
The series of interviews came after a USC's Annenberg Inclusion Initiative study of the top 1,300 top-grossing films from 2007 to 2019 found that only 3.5% of leads and co-leads were Hispanic or Latino.
Leguizamo - who was born in Colombia - said that director Spike Lee and the #OscarsSoWhite campaign encouraged him to speak out against colorism in Hollywood.
"I posted #OscarsSoWhite but #HollywoodsEvenWhiter," Leguizamo said.
"There's colorism within Latin culture that we have to fix but there's colorism in Hollywood too. I benefitted from being light-skinned."
The When You See Us star went on: "I stayed out of the sun so I could work. 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 highlighted the lack of Latinx talent shown on-screen.
Latinx and Hispanic people are almost 1 in 5 of the US population and, according to a Motion Picture Association of America study from 2018 reported by Variety, that community makes up a significant portion of movie-goers.
However, Leguizamo said that he has been told by studio executives that "Latin people don't want to see Latin people."
"Things are improving," he said. "I think COVID made us really look at ourselves in America."
He went on: "Black Lives Matter was a huge awakening for America, a reboot for America to look at themselves and see what's going on. I think everybody's trying to do the right thing and hire many more people of color.
"I want to see 20 percent of the roles in front of the camera and the crew. I'm not asking for extra. I just want what's due to us."
