John Leguizamo

Leguizamo was born in Bogotá, Colombia, the son of Luz Marina Peláez and Alberto Rudolfo Leguizamo. His father was once an aspiring film director and studied at Cinecittà in Rome, Italy, but eventually dropped out due to lack of finances. According to Leguizamo, his surname is of Basque origin and he has distant Basque roots. Research by the genealogy show Finding Your Roots indicated that Leguizamo does not have Puerto Rican, Italian, and Lebanese ancestry, as he has sometimes stated (the latter of which he claimed through his maternal grandfather). A DNA test found that his genetic ancestry includes Indigenous (Muisca), European (especially Iberian), and some African roots. His paternal grandfather was a wealthy Colombian landowner, and his great-great-grandfather, Higinio Cualla, was Mayor of Bogotá for sixteen years in the late 1800s, and was considered an important modernizer of the city. Before this discovery, Leguizamo had claimed that he was Puerto Rican on his father's side, which was one of the reasons he was selected as the Puerto Rican Day Parade Global Ambassador of the Arts, and marched in the parade on June 12, 2011. It was determined that Leguizamo's maternal lineage includes the 16th-century Spanish conquistador Sebastián de Belalcázar, as well as Jerónimo Betuma, a 17th-century indigenous Colombian of noble birth. When Leguizamo was 3 years old, his family emigrated to New York City, where they lived in various neighborhoods in Queens, including Jackson Heights. He later credited growing up as one of the first Latino children in the neighborhood as formative in his acting ability: "It was tough. There were lots of fights. I would walk through a park and be attacked, and I had to defend myself all the time. But this helped me to become funny so that I wouldn't get hit." His parents divorced when he was 13 and lived with his mother growing up. Leguizamo and his family constantly moved apartments in Queens, attending multiple elementary schools. Leguizamo was arrested twice as a teenager, once for jumping a turnstile at a New York City Subway station and another time for truancy. His family later sent him to Colombia for a year where he stayed with his relatives. Leguizamo attended Joseph Pulitzer Middle School (I.S.145) and later Murry Bergtraum High School. As a student at Murry Bergtraum, he wrote comedy material and tested it on his classmates. He was voted "Most Talkative" by his classmates. After graduating from high school, he began his theater career as an undergraduate at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, from which he eventually dropped out in favor of a career in stand-up comedy. Post-NYU, Leguizamo enrolled at LIU Post and at HB Studio, where he took theater classes.