Five Times John Leguizamo Showed Up and Made Things Better
John Leguizamo seems to be everywhere lately — guest hosting The Daily Show, appearing in the new sci-fi series The Power and not touching the new Super Mario Bros. movie with a 10-foot pole for extremely understandable reasons.
Leguizamo has obviously had a long career of being awesome and continues to be so. He’s recently done great work playing Bruno in Encanto to the joy of small children, and appearing in John Wick to the joy of dudes who become as giddy as small children during John Wick movies.
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Also, anybody who was around in the 1990s knows that it’s downright laughable to refer to William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet as a “Leonardo DiCaprio movie” when Leguizamo is right at the center, chewing scenery like a T. rex.
Not to mention Leguizamo’s acclaimed one-man shows, including 1998’s Freak and the more recent Latin History for Morons on Netflix.
We also love it when Leguizamo shows up in movies and TV shows when we weren’t expecting — case in point, him instantly elevating the material in…
‘Violent Night’
Remember that “Die Hard, but with Santa Claus” movie starring David Harbour as a badass, hammer-wielding St. Nick? If you never ended up seeing it, you might not be aware that Leguizamo plays the Hans Gruber role — to perfection. Exhibit A: his line reading of “Christmas dies tonight.”
‘The Mandalorian’
Need someone to voice a cyclops gangster hanging out ringside at some kind of seedy pig-man-based wrestling match? Leguizamo is your guy, as evidenced in this scene from Season Two of The Mandalorian.
‘Bojack Horseman’
In Bojack Horseman, when Yolanda brings Todd home to meet her family of hyper-sexualized axolotls, her “bestselling erotic novelist” father, who is also happy to pose for erotic pastry designs, is randomly played by Leguizamo.
‘Sesame Street’
Leguizamo, like any good celebrity, dutifully popped by Sesame Street, playing both himself and his alter-ego, Captain Vegetable: a superhero who spreads nutritious vegetables to children at the expense of several trespassing laws. It truly takes an egoless actor to don a root vegetable bandolier.
‘The Menu’
Since he was only in the background of the poster, hidden amongst the crowd Waldo-style, a lot of people were surprised that Leguizamo was in The Menu. He plays George Diaz, a washed-up movie star, who (SPOILERS) gets bumped off for having committed the grievous sin of appearing in the subpar flick Calling Doctor Sunshine.
Though, to be fair, in the original script, the film in question was the more understandably homicide-inducing Victor Frankenstein. When asked who he drew inspiration from to portray an artistic void of an actor, Leguizamo answered perfectly: Steven Seagal.
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