- John Leguizamo nearly passed up on "Carlito's Way" as he was tired of being typecast as a gangster.
- "I was just kind of sick of that kind of routine," he told GQ. "So I turned it down three times."
John Leguizamo almost passed up on his role in "Carlito's Way."
The actor, who currently stars in the sci-fi series "The Power," said in a video interview for GQ that he chose to decline the role in the 1993 movie directed by Brian de Palma as he was growing tired of being typecast as a gangster.
"I'm a Latin guy and I didn't wanna play another drug dealer. I was just kind of sick of that kind of routine," he said. "So I turned it down three times."
However, Leguizamo said that he decided to put his career ambitions before his personal feelings when he learned the producers were planning to approach Benicio del Toro for the role.
"The producers said, 'Look, this is the last time I'm coming to you. We're gonna go to Benicio,'" he recalled.
The Colombian-born actor then told them: "Okay, I'll take it!"
In "Carlito's Way," Leguizamo played Benny Blanco, a young, hot-headed drug dealer from the Bronx who becomes a rival to the titular protagonist, Carlito Brigante (Al Pacino).
At that point, he had played drug dealers in several films, including "Die Hard 2" (1990), "Street Hunter" (1990), "Casualties of War" (1989), and "Hanging With the Homeboys" (1991).
Leguizamo also said that when he accepted the role in "Carlito's Way," he threw himself into research to make his portrayal as authentic as possible.
Accordingly, he spent time with drug dealers in New York's Lower East Side which, in retrospect, he thinks was "crazy."
"I thought I had celebrity immunity and then I realized nobody's gonna care about it when they shoot them up," he said.
Leguizamo said that while "all that research paid off," he realized he made a close call as, not long after he parted ways with the dealers, one of their brothers got shot in an altercation.
"I'm glad I had left 'cause yeah, I would've got shot, too," he said.
Despite Leguizamo's reservations about being typecast, following the release of the film, he accepted several more roles in which he played gangsters or gang-adjacent characters.
In 2002's "Empire," he took the lead role of Victor Rosa, a heroin hustler with ambitions to become a legitimate businessman. He also played drug dealers in "Land of the Dead" (2005), "The Take" (2008), and "American Ultra" (2015).