Luiz Guzman, ‘The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3’
Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times
June 11, 2009
Luis Guzmán caught the train late and had no idea where it was going.
“I didn’t study acting,” says one of the busiest character actors around, calling his career “a fluke.” “I pretty much was a street kid growing up, always involved in the neighborhood and all the different characters. I hung out with poets and musicians and community activists. I met César Chávez when I was 17. This is everything I use. My career is a reflection of my life.
“That character I did in ‘Anger Management’ — I really grew up with a guy like that. He used to dress so sharp, he was so buffed but when he spoke, you thought you were listening to your sister.”
The actor is in town for only two days, for the premiere of Tony Scott’s “The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3,” in which he plays a disgruntled former MTA motorman sucked into a hijack plot by a vengeful ex-convict ( John Travolta) while an ordinary MTA employee ( Denzel Washington) tries to defuse the situation. The movie, he says, was “a cool flick” to work on, “watching Tony, how he manipulates the whole situation, all the cameras. And seeing how John Travolta drove this movie; he was like a badass badass, if I can say so.”
Guzmán is eager to get back home to catch his 13-year-old son’s baseball game, but rather than his native New York City, that destination is Vermont, where he is a gentleman farmer with his wife and five children. “It’s a different life, a different head,” he says. “I think it keeps me younger. It keeps me much healthier mentally, spiritually; the air is cleaner, the environment.” And, he says, “You learn how important manure is in your life.”
It has been a long, strange trip for the former social worker from the Lower East Side.