Jimmy Smits Quotes
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Latino people have come up to me and said they were motivated to become a lawyer because they saw me play one on TV - and you can't discount how great it is when they tell me I was the first.
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My life hasn't changed that much. Sure, people recognize me, and airports can get tough, but the people who stop me tend to be real nice.
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I've been told that I wasn't Latino enough, which was code for 'street' enough.
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I have and will continue to vigorously pursue opportunities in all mediums.
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Education is the key in so many ways.
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When you're 27 million strong, no one can tell you that you don't belong or expect you to just move along.
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My central strength as an actor is the fact that I'm 6 foot 3. A certain power emanates from my size, juxtaposed with the fact that I try to find an element of sensitivity in every character I play. People enjoy seeing that because it goes against what we're led to expect as far as the way men are supposed to be - macho and all that.
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At first, I took theater courses on the side. Then, theater became my minor; then it was my major.
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We tend to think of World War II and all the atrocities that happened, and people say, 'Never again.' But these things are still happening. The Amnesty International files are big.
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There's something so familial and intimate between a boxer and his trainer.
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How come actors feel like they have to give some kind of personal revelation attached to the project?
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I wasn't a great student, but I was interested in this theater thing, and I could spend hours in the library researching why the cuffs in the 18th century had four buttons. It was my handle.
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I know it affected me when I saw certain actors growing up. I had a drama teacher that would take us to see plays in New York, and it was seeing James Earl Jones and Raul Julia - I mean, this guy comes from the place my mother comes from. He's doing Shakespeare right now, and it doesn't seem to matter that he has an accent.
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I'm not a policy wonk - I'm somewhere between being undecided and a surrogate.
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I think education was the key for me, and that's what I tell kids. That base in the classics gave me something to springboard from, which I wouldn't have had if I'd come out to Los Angeles early and been guest punk of the week on 'Hill Street Blues.'
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We're at a point right now in our development in this country - setting the immigration issue aside - that you can't ignore the sheer population of us in metropolitan areas all across the country, of how significant Latino-ness is in the United States.
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The great thing about working in cable is that, since the season is truncated - we only do 12 shows - the writers are more at ease in terms of mapping out the trajectory of the story and the characters.
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I save the rage for the stage.
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When you're doing 22 shows on network television, the writers are going on vapors towards the end and, as an actor, you're just trashed by the end.
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Everything in moderation, like calories.
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I work out, but I'm not doing it specifically because I show my butt on TV.
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Growing up in New York, we lived all around the city depending on our economic circumstance. I also lived in Puerto Rico for a number of years.
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An actor tries to be versatile, to immerse himself in a different culture.
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What happens to George Clooney and Bruce Willis is great, but I can't gauge my career by anyone else's.