And The Name Is Luis Guzman!

He usually does either comedies like "Punch Drunk Love"...
or crime dramas like Soderbergh's high falutin message movie "Traffic"...
... but seldom do you see him in costume pictures like "The Count Of Monte Cristo".





Let's see what the big falsehood purveyors at Wikipedia have to say...



Luis Guzmán (born August 28, 1956 or 1957[1]) is a Puerto Rican actor. He is known for his character work. For much of his career, his squat build, wolfish features, and brooding countenance have garnered him roles largely as sidekicks, thugs, or policemen, but his later career has seen him move into more mainstream roles. He is a favorite of directors Steven Soderbergh, who cast him in Out of Sight, The Limey, and Traffic, and Paul Thomas Anderson, who cast him in Boogie Nights, Magnolia and Punch-Drunk Love.

Personal life
Guzmán was born in Cayey, Puerto Rico and was raised in New York City's Greenwich Village and the surrounding Lower East Side neighborhood. His mother, Rosa, was a hospital worker, and his stepfather, Benjamin Cardona, was a TV repairman.[1] A graduate of City College of New York, he began his career not as an actor but as a social worker; however, he moonlighted as an actor and became heavily involved in street theater and independent films. He currently lives with his wife Angelita Galarza-Guzmán and their five children in Sutton, Vermont, where he owns a ranch called Wild Orchid Stables.

Career
Guzman's numerous movie credits include Carlito's Way, Carlito's Way: Rise to Power, Welcome to Collinwood, Stonewall, Waiting..., The Salton Sea, and Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events. He has also appeared on the TV shows Homicide: Life on the Street, Frasier and Oz and had a role in the video game Grand Theft Auto: Vice City and its prequel Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories. Guzmán starred in the short-lived 2003 television comedy Luis, and is a commentator on VH1's I Love the '80s and its sequels, including I Love the '70s and I Love the '90s. He co-starred on the canceled 2007 HBO series John from Cincinnati.

For me, I love Guzman in everything I've seen him in. His way with a line is like a less grandiose Peter Falk and he can always exude menace when he is the bad guy. Mostly he plays comic relief to the hero.

But one of his roles gave him the rare (for him) opportunity to be in a costume drama*, playing "Jacopo" in "The Count of Monte Cristo". I know people who have had a problem with Guzman, who is a very modern actor, being in a period piece, where everyone else has the King's English accents. But, like Harvey Keitel as a Brooklynite** Judas Iscariot in "The Last Temptation Of Christ ", Guzman is a such a good actor, it's not really a problem.

And you can tell he's loved by the fanboys, because the geeksites only refer to him as "Gooooooozzzzzzmannnnnn!".

The bottom line is, like many of the actors I admire, he is both talented and nice enough to work with, that he is asked back repeatedly by some of the great filmmakers of our day, including Paul Thomas Anderson and Steven Soderbergh.

Gooooooozzzzzzmannnnnn!


*unless you count the "Carlito's Way" films. And no one does.
**A form of Kryptonite that turns Superman into a formerly lower class borough of New York that has recently gone through a major urban renaissance. Lex Luthor found it effective when he wanted to both defeat Superman and create real estate for urban hipsters who have just started to raise children at the same time.