Edward James Olmos: 1947—: Actor Biography - Grew Up In The Barrio, Zoot Suit, Stand And Deliver, From American Me To American Family
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Edward James Olmos: 1947—: Actor.
Edward James Olmos is one of the most influential voices of the Latino community in the United States. As an actor, he has produced a commendable body of work that has earned him numerous awards and unlimited accolades. But Olmos's life is more than a story of poor kid from the barrio who made it big in Hollywood. He is not only an actor but an activist, with a deep commitment to his community.
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Olmos was born on February 24, 1947, in East Los Angeles to Pedro and Eleanor (Huizar) Olmos. Olmos credited his parents, who divorced in 1955, for being his lifelong inspiration. He told Instyle's Kathryn Hart, "My mother is the reason I know God is a woman. She's worked for 20 years—from age 54 to 74—at County General Hospital in Los Angeles. She has worked fro…
Olmos's first major break came on the theatrical stage in 1978 when he landed a leading role of the Los Angeles production of Luis Valdez's Zoot Suit. The play, a musical drama, is a fictionalized account of the Sleepy Lagoon case, in which a group of young Hispanic men are falsely convicted of murder following what became known as the 1942 Los Angeles zoot suit riots. Olmos tried ou…
The stand-out performance of Olmos's career thus far came in the 1988 release of Stand and Deliver. The film told the true story of Bolivian-born Jaime Escal-ante, a successful computer scientist who left his career to teach math to underprivileged Hispanic kids from the barrios of East Los Angeles. The inspirational story focused on Escalante's relationship with his students at Garf…
Following Stand and Deliver Olmos appeared in numerous films, often in conjunction with director Robert M. Young, with whom he had formed the production company, YOY Productions. He played Gypsy in Triumph of the Spirit (1989) and a baseball talent scout in Talent for the Game (1991). In 1992 he delved into directing as he coproduced, directed, and starred in American Me, a graphic and realistic s…
Olmos is not only an actor, but also a tireless activist. Although sometimes the two roles blend together, as they did in his projects The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez, Stand and Deliver, and American Me, Olmos has spent a vast majority of his time over the course of his career simply working to make life better for others. By his own count, he spends 94 percent of his time working for free. Looking …
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