EDWARD JAMES OLMOS

Acclaimed actor and activist

Edward James Olmos endors two primary lessons to up-and-coming dramatists, politicians or athletes: “be disciplined” and “tell your authentic story.”

Growing up in East Los Angeles, Calif., U.S.A., Olmos, the star of major television shows like “Miami Vice” and “Battlestar Galactica” and movies like “Stand and Deliver,” lived in a community chock-full of children of Latinx, Native Black, Asian and European descent.

“I was born and raised in an area that really did design who I am,” he says.

Olmos’ father immigrated to the United States from Mexico, while his mother was born and raised in the U.S. by Mexican parents. The two met when his mother visited the family in Mexico City. Olmos himself obtained Mexican citizenship in 2007.

Even though both parents had Mexican heritage, the differences between the two were profound, and they divorced when he was 7.

Olmos’ father “had his kind of way of doing things, and my mother, who was born in East L. A., had her way of doing things,” Olmos says. “They were different. I could see it, and I could feel it. And it was great; I loved understanding all of it, which was wonderful.” understanding of how beautiful it is, of what happened to me when I started,” he says. “It really makes a big difference in how you start your life.”

His father was Catholic, and his mother was a Southern Baptist. Churches for both sects, a Buddhist temple and a Jewish synagogue were within walking distance of his house.

His neighborhood “was really an abundance of understanding of culture, race and religion,” Olmos says.

When he first heard the expression describing the United States as a “melting pot,” Olmos says he never thought of it that way.

“The Russian Orthodox people never blended. The AfricanAmerican people never blended. The Latinos never blended. The Japanese Americans never blended,” he adds.

Japanese, Armenian, Russian, African or Indigenous.

“They were all the same, where the onion stayed the onion, the olive stayed the olive, the tomato stayed the tomato, and the lettuce stayed the lettuce,” he says. “On top of it, you could put a Russian dressing or Italian dressing or French dressing.”

I only believe that there’s one race, and that’s the human race, period,” he says.

Within that human race exist great cultures and ethnicities, “but we’re all one solid race of humanity, and we’re all connected,” he says. “I don’t care what religion you are. I don’t care what culture or ethnicity you are. We are connected as a human body.”

The worst part for Olmos is that “we don’t act that way. And now, especially in today, 2024, it’s the worst I’ve ever seen it in my life.”

Given the country’s diversity, Olmos never thought he would experience this behavior in the United States.

“We come from all over the world. We’re immigrants in a native Indigenous land,” he says.

That mindset has led Olmos — in addition to a fruitful acting career — to a life of activism and involvement in the nonprofit world.

In the wake of the 1992 Los Angeles riots, Olmos received the John Anson Ford Award for his peacekeeping efforts during the unrest. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People also honored him for promoting racial unity.

He also founded several nonprofit organizations, like the Latino International Film Festival, Latino Public Broadcasting, Latino Film Institute, the Youth Cinema Project, and the Latino Book and Family Festival.

Olmos says he always used “Latino.”

“I want people to use it and understand that this is our contribution to humanity and trying to understand ourselves,” he says. “What have we given? What has the Latino given to all of us?”

Discipline

Olmos learned the value of discipline early in his life.

While Olmos blossomed into a talented baseball player, the skills of that sport didn’t come naturally. He says he could barely catch a ball he threw against a wall, but with much-determined practice, it became second nature. Fast forward a few years, and he’s the Golden State Batting Champion.

“Discipline is the key,” he says.

Participating in an activity that brings passion will increase performance, he says, especially practicing on the hard days when you don’t feel like doing it.

“It’s a very simple, simple understanding, but it’s hard to do. It’s easy to say, but it’s hard to do.”

Consequently, baseball taught him discipline, determination, perseverance and patience. These attributes filtered into many aspects of his life.

It made me able to do whatever it is that I wanted to do and become the best that I could be in doing that because I had the discipline to do it every day, seven days a week. That’s really the key.

“It made me able to do whatever it is that I wanted to do and become the best that I could be in doing that because I had the discipline to do it every day, seven days a week. That’s really the key,” he says.

Even though Olmos’ baseball talent was prodigious, the siren song of music, especially mid1950s rock and roll, wooed him.

By 1961, he had joined a band that took the name “Pacific Ocean” at his suggestion. While he may not have been the best singer, no one would be the wiser if you could scream the lyrics.

Olmos started collegiate acting classes a few years later. He thought they would help improve his singing. However, he discovered projecting a spoken word was easier than a sung one.

“It helped me,” he says. “The theater helped my music [and] my music helped my theater.”

Growing up around so many diverse cultures in his neighborhood helped Olmos decipher his various roles on stage, television and the big screen.

“Melodies trigger off other forms of understanding that you’ve had,” he says. “For me, it’s all interrelated. There’s no way I would have become who I am had I been isolated in some kind of a situation where I hadn’t been exposed to the kind of things that I was exposed to. I wouldn’t be who I am at all.”

In 1978, Olmos got his big on-stage break by starring in “Zoot Suit,” nabbing the role of El Pachuco in the musical drama that chronicled the then-wellknown 1942 “Sleepy Lagoon” case that caused the wrongful murder convictions of a group of Latino kids.

The play had an expected run of 10 days but instead ran a full year before moving on to Broadway. During this time Olmos earned a Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award, a

Theatre World Award and a Tony Award nomination.

“That’s luck,” he says. “When you prepare yourself for the opportunity, the opportunity opens itself, and you’re prepared for that opportunity, and you do it, and man, you just succeed.”

“Zoot Suit” — both in Los Angeles and New York — led to Olmos nabbing guest-starring roles on television, like “Starsky and Hutch” and “Hawaii Five-Oh,” and movies like 1982’s “Blade Runner.” Two years later, Olmos joined the cast of “Miami Vice.” During that run, he won Emmy and Golden Globe awards.

When you prepare yourself for the opportunity, the opportunity opens itself, and you’re prepared for that opportunity, and you do it, and man, you just succeed.

Further accolades followed with his starring role in 1988’s “Stand and Deliver,” where he earned Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations for best actor.

Olmos is still surprised that he is the only U.S.-born Mexican American to earn an Oscar nomination. No one else has done so before or since.

“Excuse me? I’m the only one? That’s very, very, very beautiful but weird. Very strange,” he says. “I’m 77. I did that back in 1988, and I got that accolade then, and there’s been nothing. I haven’t inspired anybody, or nobody else has been able to do it.”

Olmos attributes the lack of nominations to a culturalawareness deficiency.

Previously, “they haven’t been given the opportunity. Period,” he says.” Now, the Oscars allow the culture “to explore and become themselves, just like they do the African American experience, and most recently, the Asian experience. It’s been fantastic.”

Even Indigenous actors have recently garnered significant awards, he adds.

“When I go anywhere, I tell them, ‘I can’t believe it, guys. Come on. Write our stories; produce our stories,” he says. “That’s what I did. I had to learn how to act. I learned how to sing.

I learned how to dance. I learned how to produce. I learned how to direct. I had to do all of that, or else I wouldn’t be able to do the movies I needed to make and the stories that I needed to do.”

Tell Your Story

Olmos became a better storyteller in his early 20s. He was in a play in a small theater when a teacher approached him and asked him to talk to a group of Latino students. At first, Olmos demurred, suggesting they get someone more successful.

He told the teacher: “I’m just learning what I’m doing right here. And I’m not even good at it,” he says.

However, the teacher was insistent, saying they preferred someone “in the struggle,” at which point Olmos relented.

Standing up in front of a group of students who weren’t much younger than he was at the time was tough. None of them, aside from the teacher, asked him any questions.

After that humbling experience, another teacher at that school asked him to speak to another group of students. Olmos wanted to say no because it was “so uncomfortable” and outside of his organic sense of understanding what he was doing.

“Even though it was a performance in some ways, it was more about talking about myself,” he says.

In the end, though, Olmos did. This time, he told the teacher not to ask him any questions. If the kids don’t want to talk to him, they’ll have to look at him just standing before them.

“This time, I took over,” he says. “I made it my domain. And I said, ‘Hey, everybody, listen; I know you don’t want to hear it from me, but you can either listen to me for a while or go back to listen to your teacher. The choice is yours.”

Olmos began talking about his youth.

The students “all started to tune in,” he says. “The time went by quickly, and it worked, and they got up and they were very happy, and they left. And I felt good about myself.”

What came next, though, was even more significant. Those two meetings directly affected how Olmos felt when he went back on an actual stage.

Even though it was a performance in some ways, it was more about talking about myself.

When “I performed that night, I felt something when I was on stage that I’d never felt before,” he says. “All of a sudden, I said, ‘You know what? I feel good today.’ I said, ‘Man, it has to be what I was doing before I got on’” stage.

He says sharing experiences gave him “a sense of truth that I now had that I could use on my stage and my performances.”

As a result, Olmos was willing to talk to any group about anything “as long as I could exercise my truths,” he says. “When I went to touch my craft in my art form, I would bring that reality.”

In the coming years, he did 150 annual speaking engagements, sometimes two or three per day.

Olmos would speak at grammar schools, junior high schools, colleges, conventions, prisons and juvenile halls. He