John Leguizamo turned down Mr. And Mrs. Smith because he felt “dissed” about pay
"They were paying [Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt] $20 million and they were going to pay me scale. I felt dissed, and they probably weren’t dissing me."
Aux News John Leguizamo
John Leguizamo is not a guy who bothers trying to hide his frequently blunt, occasionally caustic feelings about Hollywood: He’s talked in the past—and then again recently—about his lingering anger over being used as a “pawn” to get Michael Keaton to play the Vulture in Spider-Man: Homecoming. (Noting in a recent interview that “another actor would’ve sued” over having the meaty part pulled away from him after lengthy negotiations, allegedly as a negotiating tactic to get Keaton to take the job.) He doesn’t reserve that sharp honesty for others, either, recently kicking himself for turning down a role in 2005's Mr. And Mrs. Smith because he felt “dissed” about pay.
This is part of a longer conversation that Leguizamo had with Business Insider this week, covering large portions of his legendary career. That includes roles he’s still mad at himself for turning down, including the part played by Stanley Tucci in The Devil Wears Prada, the role that ultimately went to Robin Williams in animated comedy Happy Feet—“I had done Ice Age. I was going, “I don’t want to be doing all these ice movies’”—and most especially the part that Vince Vaughn played in Smith. Leguizamo says he turned down the role because he learned he’d be working for scale, while Brad Pitt and Angeline Jolie would both be making seven figures:
They were paying them $20 million and they were going to pay me scale. I felt dissed, and they probably weren’t dissing me, but I felt dissed. Sometimes when you’re a person of color, you’re so used to being dissed that you think you’re being dissed, and sometimes you’re not being dissed. So that’s what happens, and you have to go to a lot of therapy to fix that.
Among other interesting bits from the interview: Leguizamo also genuinely loves the character of Sid the sloth from the Ice Age movies, citing it as one of the three most important roles of his career—“We created this innocent, naive, beautiful soul”—and that anyone hoping to lure him back to comic book work had better have a juicy part ready: “I would if I was offered The Riddler or some part like that.”
40 Comments
He’ll always be Luigi Mario to me.
He’ll always be House Of Buggin’ (Mexican SNL) to me.
What was that quote? “When I look into my man’s eyes, I don’t want to see nothing but myself looking back”. I want to say I’ve never forgotten that, but I have a feeling I kinda have forgotten at least part of it lol.
Man, House of Buggin’ was so so so so much better than SNL but was never going to get the broad acclaim and audience because so many people viewed it as “ethnic humor” (i.e., not white people).
In Living Color was pretty popular.
Leguizamo would be the better guy to give $20M to.
$20M would be eight figures, not seven. That doesn’t change your point or his.
According to the internets, Brad Pitt was paid $20,000,000 and Angelina Jolie was paid $10,000,000. And yes, you are correct, both are eight-figure (rather than seven-figure) deals…
I don’t want to be dismissive of his feelings, but a distinct quirk in his discourse give a disconcerting impression that his disposition might be disturbingly distressed
Your post is seriously heavy on the Ds. Diddly Diddly Ds.
It’s because he can’t pronounce the letter ‘B’. It’s all due to a trauma he suffered at Bolumbia University.
Heavy on the Ds? I got a Sydney Sweeney notification for this?
D D D Dat’s all folks!
Yeah, he frequently talks about parts he won’t take and generally seems like his opinion of himself is not in line with Hollywood’s opinion of him.
I think the real question is: What did they pay Vaughn for the role?Because if they paid Vaughn a penny more than scale, then yeah, Leguizamo got fucking dissed. If Vaughn was also only offered scale though, Leguizamo can feel free to keep kicking himself.Not to say Vaughn at that point wasn’t more of a draw than Leguizamo at the time, and may have been offered more as a result of that. But that would still be a diss; paying a Caucasian actor more for taking over a role originally offered to a POC actor.
POC actor? As a white-passing, Venezuelan-born-and-raised, naturalized American citizen, I can tell you the only thing “of color” about John Leguizamo is his Queens accent. Dude is whiter than an arepa. If he’s POC, then I have been seriously goofing by not leveraging that term to garner sympathy/job opportunities.
John Leguizamo is a white Latin American, not any more a POC than Shakira or Pablo Escobar.
Legendary?
Do it right:
“Legen . . . wait for it . . . dary!”
Every time I see this guy in a movie, I’m thinking he’s lucky as shit he got the part.
Shockingly the movie somehow did well without him in it…
He was right to be pissed. Leguizamo was a very well established character actor in 2005, and this wasn’t some low budget prestige project, it was a $110 million mainstream action movie. Offering scale was insulting.
Perhaps, although Vince Vaughn took the role smack dab in the middle of his big hot streak, and considering he’s partially uncredited (appearing in the end crawl but not in the larger credits), I don’t imagine he got much more.
Agreed but this is his take on like literally every opportunity he’s given. It’s a recurrent theme in his stage shows. He gets insulted when he’s asked to read for a role.
Well if you work in Hollywood and don’t know exactly what you’re going to get from John Leguizamo at this point, that’s on you.
Technically, he only turned down one of the multiple characters Williams played, that of Ramon.I will say he has, in fact, played The Riddler before, in HBO Max’s Batman Audio Adventures, and he was pretty good.
Hell always be that clown-lookin’ demon from “Spawn” to me.
Too bad that movie sucked so bad… I had high hopes for it back in the day (as a fan of the comic books)
Leguizamo is easily the best part of that movie.
Agreed. But it’s a relatively low bar.
TIL John Leguizamo thinks he’s 2005-circa Brad Pitt.
They had to rewrite the role after he passed on it, too. Originally the character could only say “dissed” over and over.
Hey, I don’t care if it’s diss, dat or ‘de udder ‘ting!
Wonder how he’ll feel when he dies and the AV Club doesn’t run a story about it. RIP Roger Corman.
Maybe they’re building up to it… it has to be kind of painful to say goodbye to such a massive legend in the history of cheap, crappy, but fun film-making.
You know the AVC’s official policy: pop culture didn’t exist before 2009.
How much does he think he should have been offered? Because getting offered scale seems ridiculous, but at the same time why bring up what Brad and Angelina got? If your a supporting actor you are not going to get anything close to what the actors playing the title roles are, when they are being played by the most famous actors in the world at the time.
Probably because what he’s saying is the stars got 8-figure deals, and he was offered the bare minimum the production would be required to pay literally any SAG actor for the role. I.e. they didn’t value what he specifically could bring to the role.
And he then goes on to point out that they weren’t necessarily dissing him personally, but rather that role was not considered important enough for them to offer more.
So, is there a number between scale and $10M? That’s how much.
Oh look at Mr. Italian Face complaining about being turned down for being “of color”