Interview with Hector Elizondo
Thursday / October 1, 2026
About Hector Elizondo
New York-born stage and screen actor, Obie winner for Steambath and Emmy winner for Chicago Hope, known for Pretty Woman, Last Man Standing and many Garry Marshall films.
Source: SAG-AFTRA Foundation on YouTube
These answers are taken from Hector Elizondo Career Retrospective | Conversations at the SAG-AFTRA Foundation on SAG-AFTRA Foundation's YouTube channel. You! Backstage did not conduct this interview.
What was your very first experience with acting?
I saw a glimpse of my future when I was about 10 or 11 years old, when I was forced to volunteer for a television show called The Okey Dokey Ranch House with Wendy Barrie. It was NBC, round TV, black and white, of course, a precursor to The Howdy Doody Show. A very kind gentleman had something to do with that: W.C. Handy, the father of the blues. I did not know who he was until decades later, when I saw a photograph. I was a nine or 10 year old kid singing St. Louis Woman, a song that he had written.
Days later I was whisked to a rehearsal room in the West 50s with my overdressed uncle. The other children all had portfolios. I had no portfolio. They told me to bring music, so I brought the lyrics I'd cut out of the Hit Parader magazine. A couple of gentlemen were there with the cigars and the sleeve garters. They never made fun of me. They put the lyrics on the piano, and I sang. Then I did the day's job, and it was long and boring.
When my parents opened the check in our kitchen on West 107th Street, my dad said, "This isn't right. A kid shouldn't be making this much money. This is what a grown man makes." It was 30 something dollars.
When did you start acting?
I did my first play, Mister Roberts, at the Equity Library Theatre. I had no experience whatsoever. I had five lines. I was the only non-Equity person in the show, and I had to audition for that. I was one of the sailors, and I got the gig.
The actor I did it with was terrific. I never saw him sweat. He was such a gentleman. He was saving the performance for the performance. It was like a fighter training: you don't leave it all in training. Even up to the first preview he was still working, not rushing too much, and he saved the shot for when the curtain went up. And he would make a point of including everyone. He said, "We're all in this together."
What attracted you to begin a career as an actor?
Two moments. Someone invited me to my first play. It was A Taste of Honey, a play with music, and Billy Dee Williams suddenly came out in a scene. He went to the same high school, Commerce High School. I couldn't believe it. He's singing and dancing, and I said, "I can do that, man. This is terrific." And he's telling a story. Everybody was mesmerized by what was going on on that stage. That was the beginning of my interest.
And then of course when I saw Marlon Brando on screen, I said, "I want to do that. I don't know what the hell he's doing, but I want to do that." I saw lots of movies with my father: James Cagney, John Wayne. He loved the way the good guys knocked the bad guy. But when I saw Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire, I saw something else. I saw an engagement that was beyond anything I'd ever seen. Later on I realized what affected me was the writing. There was artistry there. If it ain't on the page, it ain't on the stage.
What do you enjoy most about acting?
Years later I realized what my part in the theater was about. I was the intermediary between author and audience. Telling the story is the most important thing. The oldest thing you can do in human history, besides birthing, is telling the story of what it's like to be alive.
On my first movie, in the south of Spain, I took the horse out on a lovely evening, twinkling stars. I'm decked out like a bandit. I've got a gun, I've got the horse, I've got the rifle. I'm playing like I always played as a kid, and they're paying me for this. I can't believe it. I was completely enthralled with my good fortune.
And I love accents. They were music to me. I love the way you have to change your tongue and the placement. It's a challenge, and it's musical.
What was a great moment for you as an actor?
With Steambath, we were waiting for the papers to come out, the New York Times and the Post. We were in this restaurant with the producers and a couple of the other actors, and it was late, about 10 or 11 o'clock. Talk about another time. A guy pulls up, comes out of the truck, and boom, puts the big pile of papers there tied up, and they read from the New York Times. I said, "Oh, this is going to sink." And suddenly I got the reviews. I don't quite remember how I left that restaurant. I said, "I got to go out." It was colder than hell, and I wasn't properly attired for the cold. I just walked around the block. I said, "Holy Christmas, you mean I'm going to pay the rent?"
I'll be able to pay rent, man, which is all I want. Paying the rent and doing a job that you love. That was a moment in my life. So again, I thank Bruce Jay Friedman for writing such a thing, and the wonderful actors.
How did your acting career unfold?
I was doing The Great White Hope with James Earl Jones. It was the hit of the year. We started at Arena Stage and then we took it to New York. Near the end of my run, Ed Sherin, the director, said, "I'm going to do my first movie in Spain, and Burt Lancaster wants to talk to you. He came to see the show last night." We got along. He was born in Harlem too. And we went to Spain, and I thought, if this is what moviemaking is about, I'm in it.
On All in the Family, I did The Elevator Story. Carroll O'Connor did not want to do that episode. He thought nobody wanted to see him stuck in an elevator with a Puerto Rican and his wife giving birth. Norman had to talk him into it. I knew nothing about that until years later.
I met Garry Marshall at a Saturday basketball game at his house. I did a behind the back pass, like an old New York guard, and the ball hit him right in the mouth. He went down to one knee and checked his teeth were there. He said, "You're a terrific actor and a lousy passer. I think I have a movie for you." That movie was Young Doctors in Love.
What advice do you have for new actors?
Have an auxiliary gig. Make sure you have a thick skin. I don't know how they can audition today. It's all on camera. You don't get to meet anybody. When you went to an audition then, you auditioned with a human being. You have to think of yourself as a storyteller. You're an intermediary between an author and audience. That's your job. And remind yourself of your atomic insignificance. It's not about you, ever.
If you want to be an actor, don't make fun of your character. Protect your character. Don't play a villain like a villain, because there's no such thing. Do not play stereotypes. You just make sure you take care of your character. The author will take care of the rest.
Walter Matthau told me, "You don't have a career. A career is something you can lose. You want a reputation." Just keep doing your work honorably. Garry Marshall said, "Wear comfortable shoes." Make sure you're prepared.
What has been your greatest accomplishment as an actor?
The night of the Emmys, I was separated from my wife by somebody, and it was all a dizzy thing. I reached out to her, and I didn't quite kiss her. It was a whirlwind of a moment, and suddenly I was on stage. All I could think of was to thank my mother and father on 107th Street, which was the neighborhood that raised me. George Carlin was out there. I looked at him, and he's from my neighborhood. I said, "You know what I'm talking about, George." And he nodded. All I could think of was 107th Street and the Depression, and I was lucky that I had that man as my father during that time. So I was very grateful for the people who shaped me.
Popi was the first network television series to feature an all Latino cast, and I loved it. I loved carrying the ball that way, and I was able to affect the atmosphere, to affect the environment. That's what excited me almost more than anything.
Think about a demanding director, professor or cast mate. What made him or her difficult? How did you successfully interact with this person?
I worked with Robert Shaw twice. I did Strindberg's Dance of Death on Broadway with him and Zoe Caldwell. Early on in rehearsals he said, "Have a spot of breakfast." It was about 9 or 10 in the morning, and he'd found a saloon. I said, "No, thank you. Not in the morning." Then I found out that he was always testing you. Very smart guy, very bright guy, but he wanted you to know that he was smart. He wanted to challenge you, play ping pong.
So I went the other way. I said, "I'm not very competitive." Of course I was. But that really threw him off his stride. I said, "I'd rather sit here and contemplate." Of course, not true. I had him a little on edge, which was cool for the role. He played this rambunctious man who drank on stage, and I played a doctor who was very introverted and quiet with him. I never had a problem after that. I refused to play the game with him. He was a good guy, actually.
Have you progressed in your acting career as you have expected?
I started to have that feeling once I did my first movie. I said, "I can do movies. That's what I'm going to do. I do all the accents. I look like everybody."
My career is divided between before Pretty Woman and after. It worked so well that I couldn't play bad guys anymore. All I got was that guy. And I still had some juice. I said, "No, man. I'm not going to do that anymore. Let's change it. I want to play a bad guy." They're simply more interesting. Any actor knows that.
Why have I kept working? First is reputation, thank goodness. And second, I do comedy and drama. Comedy is harder. There's a lot of discipline in comedy. You've got to know that timing. You've got to know where the rests are.
How do you show your cast mates the importance of communication?
If somebody was going to give me a problem, I'd make sure that we addressed it early on, privately. But I never had problems. As they say in Italian, the fish stinks from the head. If the head is good, the rest is all right.
Early on in Last Man Standing, some clever young writer said my character would do this and this. I said, "Tim, let's have a meeting." I called him in, and I said, "I can't do this." And I explained why, and he realized, yep, you can't. You're compromising the character. It doesn't make any sense. He wouldn't be doing that. When I spoke concretely, I said it would ruin the business. We'd have lawsuits within the story, because suddenly I turned into this lecher in the office. He was cool about it.
Of all the roles you have played in the past, which is your favorite?
Young Doctors in Love, with Garry Marshall, is still my favorite. It was so ad-libbed. It was invented every day. He treated everybody well, and he fed everybody very well, so everybody wanted to work for him. And if it was your birthday, he found out and they celebrated your birthday.
One that got overlooked is Tortilla Soup. It came out in 2001. They did it for under two million. It was a quickie, no money at all, but that's cool. We worked hard. It's a terrific movie, because it's a comedy but it's also a drama. It's about love, family and food. And it holds up pretty well. It was a very hard gig, man. The original director disappeared just before we rolled.
Who is your favorite actor, and why?
I absorbed the way they handled themselves during the day. The process of their work: they didn't make a big deal about it, even though they had their own private way of getting it. I watched how they affected the mood, and that made the difference for everybody. James Garner especially was terrific that way. He was just a delight to work with.
I had naive questions, because I had hardly done any TV. I said, "Jim, you seem to know everything and everybody. You know how to run the show. Why don't you direct?" He said, "See that guy over there?" There was a guy with a cigarette in each hand, walking back and forth. "That's the director. I don't want to look like that. You're just a traffic cop on television."
Describe your acting style.
First I have to know what the scene is about. What do I want? What is this about? I go from here to there. Okay, now I know what it's about. And then I see where it's bumpy. That's too literate there. People don't speak like that if it's a contemporary piece. It's got to be more colloquial. You have to fix things in your own script, and essentially you have to be your own director.
Rex Reed once said, "A performer delivers a blow and an actor receives one." There's a lot to that. A performer just needs a cue. An actor needs other things: the weather, what you're dressed in, aroma, tactility. And he needs ping pong. He or she needs to hear, so they can respond.
I don't play a bad guy like a bad guy. Mr. Grey in The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, I didn't play him like a good guy either. I played him like a person who had a job to do, and his job was killing people. Nobody's perfect.
Tell me about a time where you had difficulty with a character. What was the role and why was it challenging?
Steambath was a challenge. It was a satire by Bruce Jay Friedman, based loosely on No Exit, and I played God as a Puerto Rican steam bath attendant with a strong working-class accent. I'd heard that all my life, and I always had ears for accents. But it was a challenge, not from the acting point of view, but getting through some of the human hurdles. There were obstacles there, personality obstacles.
The second biggest challenge is when you meet some people that don't make your day easier, and you have to know how to navigate that. You learn social skills. I learned that by watching people who had them, as opposed to people who didn't.
On Chicago Hope it was difficult because it was real medicine. It was about real stuff, and you had to talk the talk, and it's got to sound like it's something that you do every day. We had doctors on the set every episode, a different specialty for whatever procedure was highlighted that episode.
Tell me something I may not know from reading your resume.
On a.k.a. Pablo, they forced me to volunteer to direct three of them. Norman Lear said, "We need to get a new director," and he's looking at me. He says, "The cast says you should direct." I'd never uttered a word about directing. I said, "That's just coaching. That's just helping actors. That's not directing." In those days you had to go into a different booth and snap the show. He said, "Don't worry, we'll help you." So I directed. I hated it. I broke out in a rash.
And my agents, when I started, wanted me to change my name. They wanted me to cap my teeth and wear a toupee. I said, "Then you want yourself another boy." They wanted me to play drug dealers. I said, unless it's a real story about a drug dealer, you're using them as a stereotype background prop. I'm not a prop. If it's well written, you got me.
Hector Elizondo's Full Biography
Hector Elizondo was born in New York City, New York, where he was raised on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. He is the son of Carmen Medina Reyes and MartÃn EchevarrÃa Elizondo. Hector is of Basque and Puerto Rican descent, and "Elizondo" is Basque for "beside the church". His lifestyle in his days before acting was as diverse as the roles he plays today. He was a conga player with a Latin band, a classical guitarist and singer, a weightlifting coach, a ballet dancer and a manager of a bodybuilding gym. In his teens, he played basketball and baseball, and was scouted by the New York Giants and Pittsburgh Pirates farm teams. After a knee injury ended his dance career, he switched to drama. Since then, he has frequently appeared on Broadway, most notably with George C. Scott in Arthur Penn's production of "Sly Fox" for which he received a Drama Desk nomination and for his role as "God" in "Steambath", which won him an Obie Award. Other theater credits include; "The Prisoner of Second Avenue"; "The Great White Hope"; "Dance of Death" with Robert Shaw and "The Rose Tattoo" opposite Cicely Tyson. Countless starring roles in television include: Foley Square (1985); Medal of Honor Rag (1982); Casablanca (1983) (in which he recreated the Claude Rains role of police chief "Capt. Renault"); Freebie and the Bean (1974); Popi (1975) and as Sophia Loren's husband in the CBS special Courage (1986). Guest appearances include: Kojak (1973); Kojak: Ariana (1989); A Case of Immunity (1975); Baretta (1975); All in the Family (1971); The Rockford Files (1974) and Bret Maverick (1981). In addition, he also directed a.k.a. Pablo (1984), the first show to utilize seven cameras instead of the usual four. On the big screen, he has been seen in, among others, American Gigolo (1980); The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974); Cuba (1979); Valdez Is Coming (1971) and in four films directed by Garry Marshall: Young Doctors in Love (1982); The Flamingo Kid (1984); Nothing in Common (1986) and Overboard (1987). Elizondo starred with Dan Aykroyd and Michelle Pfeiffer in PBS' Tales from the Hollywood Hills: Natica Jackson (1987) (based on a collection of John O'Hara stories) and made his debut as a stage director with a production of "Villa!" starring Julio Medina. In addition, he performed in the 50th anniversary production of "War of the Worlds" co-starring Jason Robards and the TV-movie Addicted to His Love (1988) with Barry Bostwick.