John Leguizamo Is a Noble Fellow
Now that moviegoers have Odyssey fever, thanks to Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster, audiences are revisiting characters that they first encountered in English class: wily warriors, cool monsters, island temptresses. Be honest, though. Did you remember Eumaeus, Odysseus’ faithful swineherd, who waits in Ithaca for his master’s return? Neither did John Leguizamo, when Nolan took him out to lunch a while back, at the Odeon, and offered him the role. “I was trying not to eat, because I spit a lot,” Leguizamo recalled recently. “He said, ‘You’re going to play the most loyal character in Western literature.’ I was, like, Wow, that’s a big deal!”
Leguizamo, who grew up in Bogotá and Queens, had read the Odyssey at Murry Bergtraum High School, near One Police Plaza. “I didn’t really pay attention,” he said, at a Mediterranean restaurant on Lexington Avenue. He wore a tight black T-shirt and chains around his neck, and held a napkin over his lips to avoid spritzing. “I was just about hanging out—girls, partying, and being comical and whatnot.” At nineteen, he reread the epic on his own time. “I was trying to save myself, because I’d been working at Kentucky Fried Chicken for two years,” he went on. In the nineties, he made his name performing impish one-man shows such as “Mambo Mouth” and “Spic-O-Rama,” placing himself, like the ancient singers of the Odyssey, in the oral tradition.
Lately, Leguizamo has been reading Daniel Mendelsohn’s translation of Homer, which describes Eumaeus as a “noble fellow.” Nolan had his own take on the character. He put Leguizamo, who is a spry sixty-six, in old-man makeup and cataract-clouded contacts, and had his hair bleached white. “It burned my eyebrows the first time,” Leguizamo said. He spent most days on set covered in filth. “I felt very fugly,” he recalled. “I was, like, Oh, my God, everybody looks incredible! Matt Damon looks fit as fuck. Tom Holland looks handsome as shit. I look like a gelded you-know-what.” He shot many of his scenes at a cliffside castle in Sicily, acting alongside pigs and donkeys and oxen—which had to be helicoptered uphill—and also the Portuguese podengos that split the role of Odysseus’ hound, Argus. “It’s an ancient breed,” he said. “I call it Portuguese pendejo, because it’s not the brightest dog in the world. Pendejo is Spanish for ‘dopey.’ ”
After lunch, Leguizamo walked over to Hixenbaugh Ancient Art, a gallery on Sixtieth Street. He was greeted by its proprietor, Randall Hixenbaugh, in a room filled with busts, pots, and helmets. Leguizamo had worried that Hixenbaugh was a tomb raider, but the dealer, in an oxford shirt and khakis, assured him that the artifacts—from Greece, Rome, Egypt, and Mesopotamia—came from preëxisting collections. Hixenbaugh opened a display case and took out a ceramic vase from the late Bronze Age, roughly Odysseus’ time. “This is what’s called a stirrup vessel,” he explained. “This probably would have been for flavoring for wine.”
He tried handing it to Leguizamo. “Oh, no, I’m too afraid,” the actor said, flinching.
“That’s the fun, I think, of collecting ancient art—it’s not all sacrosanct,” Hixenbaugh said. He turned to a wine amphora from Athens, circa 460 B.C., painted with a tunicked soldier leaving home.
“Now, why is this guy naked and the other guy not?” Leguizamo asked, pointing to another amphora. “Is he a god?”
“Yeah, this is Dionysus,” Hixenbaugh said. “Really important men are often naked, too, like Alexander the Great.”
Nearby was a small Roman figure of Odysseus, from the first century A.D. Leguizamo’s eyes bulged at the seventy-five-thousand-dollar price tag. “That’s almost my whole salary for the movie!” he said. “If it was cheaper, I’d give it to Matt.”
Toward the back was a wall of ancient Greek armor, including helmets, shields, and ankle guards (to protect those Achilles tendons). They looked at a bronze breastplate from the fourth century B.C., detailed with a belly button and pert nipples. “This would have scared the hell out of opponents,” Hixenbaugh said. “Imagine if the Greeks were fighting some barbarians who don’t have armor, and this guy looks like he’s made out of metal.”
“A robot!” Leguizamo said.
The Bronze Age Greeks, Hixenbaugh explained, had a limited geography. “The Odyssey’s all about that. Odysseus is exploring the bounds of the Bronze Age Greek world, and it’s very mysterious. They didn’t know quite what was over the horizon.”
“I’m going to tell Chris Nolan he should have talked to you,” Leguizamo said. He predicted that the movie would send Hixenbaugh customers. The New York première was that night, and Leguizamo spotted a gift for Nolan: a silver coin, from the Aegean isle of Thásos, circa 140-110 B.C., minted with the wreathed head of Dionysus and priced at a reasonable seven hundred and fifty dollars. “You take credit cards?” he asked. ♦