John Leguizamo on Discovering How Admiration Looks Better With Age

There are a couple of actors I saw who impressed the living life out of me. I saw Al Pacino in "American Buffalo," and I saw John Malkovich in "True West." I was lucky to be in New York, where you could see these kinds of performances. They were life-changing. They were so raw and visceral and impulsive. Like Brando in "A Streetcar Named Desire," that kind of important milestone performance.

But the performance that I always wanted to see but didn't see was Richard Pryor. He was one of the greatest comedians, in my opinion, who ever lived. He was able to do it all. He could be so incredibly personal and raw and political and social, do voices, characters, tell stories and jokes. He could do all of it and move you in a way that you never saw before, that was a little bit dangerous and incredibly charming at the same time.

It affected me in a way that it helped me through my childhood. I was about 13 when I first heard him. I felt he made things so crystal-clear and made my childhood experiences have a sense and a meaning and a reason, a purpose. And then when I wanted to perform, I wanted to give somebody that same kind of feeling that he gave me. I think that's really what kind of makes me do my one-man show: I want to give back that feeling that he made me feel, that I belonged.

People have come up to me and told me I affected them that way. I didn't used to allow it to really hit me for some reason. But now that I'm a little older, a little more comfortable in my own skin, I've heard it and it means a lot to me. Kristoffer Diaz, who wrote "The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity," told me that I was a huge influence and the reason why he writes. And now I feel very touched and very moved. And one of his actors, Desmin Borges, put it in a different way. And I was like, wow. It's good to get older. Especially when you hear these things from younger cats you respect and you love their work; you go, "Oh, wow, for them to say something like that means a whole lot." It was a whole new barometer of my way to look at myself. Yes, that was a good discovery.

John Leguizamo has appeared in such diverse films as "Love in the Time of Cholera" and "To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar." On television, he has enjoyed arcs on such series as "ER" and "My Name Is Earl." He has created and appeared in several one-person shows. He returned to Broadway in a revival of "American Buffalo."