Seeking a Role for Latino Actors

If Hollywood does not come to you, you go to Hollywood. Actor Ivan Olivarez has adopted that philosophy in an attempt to increase the number of Latino faces on television and in film.

He takes the task seriously, one day at a time, inside the walls of the Van Nuys Recreation Center, where he teaches acting in both English and Spanish every Wednesday and Friday night. His classes are filled primarily with young Latino students eager to learn the ins and outs of playing to the camera.

Hoping to see the number of Latinos in Hollywood productions increase--a recent Screen Actors Guild study put Latino representation in film and television at just 4%--the 38-year-old Olivarez transforms a small gym at the park on Vanowen Street into his own version of off-off-Broadway. Latinos from all over the area go there for a chance to prove that they have what it takes to be the next Andy Garcia, Jennifer Lopez or Jimmy Smits.

Susan Pineda, 24, and Israel Jimenez, 28, started attending the workshop after taking acting classes elsewhere.

Both said they decided to go to Olivarez’s classes before looking for an agent.

First, he tells his students, you have to learn to love the craft of acting.

Before venturing to auditions, before getting an agent, you must have the passion to entertain others and the desire to get inside your characters’ minds.

It’s all about psychology. Understand your character, love your character, hate your character, be your character, he preaches.

And what better way to learn the craft of acting than at a theater where there are no TelePrompTers to aid those who forget their lines, where live audiences let actors know immediately if they like their performances?

“Here we don’t have the opportunity to cut and redo a scene,” Olivarez said, taking a break during a recent class. “They have one chance and have to learn fast.”

Memorizing lines and pretending to be somebody else are not enough, he tells them.

“You . . . want to play a street vendor?” Christian Rojas, 16, remembers Olivarez asking her when she began taking classes a few months ago.

“Yes, I do,” the timid young woman replied.

“Wear dirty pants, a torn shirt, old sweater and spend some time on the streets,” Olivarez advised. “Just lay down there and feel the ugly stares of passersby. Feel how children avoid you because they think you are less than a person. Pick up the couple of pennies people throw at you.

“Once you have felt what it’s like to be a homeless woman, you come here and project those feelings to the audience. Let the audience know what it’s like to be living on the streets, with nobody to care if you live or die.”

Students say the free courses can be demanding but rewarding.

“It was an experience so real, being a street vendor, I wanted to cry,” said Rojas, one of about 30 students who regularly take his class. “But it helped me. Now I can come here, get on that stage and cry. [I] feel the character’s pain.”

In addition to teaching acting exercises, Olivarez writes plays that some of his best students perform with his parent company, Constelacion Agrupacion Teatral (Constellation Theatrical Company), a nonprofit Latino arts organization that performs at theaters in various parts of the city.

Olivarez abandoned his own theater acting career in Peru 14 years ago, hoping to land a gig in Hollywood. He knocked on doors and auditioned, he said, but the answer was always the same: No, thank you.

That’s what prompted him to organize the workshops more than 10 years ago.

“Hollywood needs to realize that Latinos can bring quality performances to mainstream film and television,” he said.

Many casting directors and producers do not cast Latinos because they are unaware of Latino buying power, according to a report commissioned by the Screen Actors Guild.

After Hollywood learns about and exploits that purchasing power, which has reached billions of dollars in recent years, the industry will start hiring actors who look like members of that community, concluded preliminary findings of the guild study, titled “Missing in Action: Latinos in and out of Hollywood.”

Those findings were released in May; the full study is due out later this month.

Although guild officials say they could not comment or endorse a particular acting school, such as Constelacion, they encourage any effort to promote diversity in Hollywood.

Not everyone, however, agrees that workshops targeting one ethnic group will get the desired results.

“The best thing for the actor is to trust himself,” said Alphy Hoffman, president of Bobby Hoffman Casting. “Classes made for one ethnicity are really not needed. All roles can be played by any ethnic race. Denzel [Washington] can take a role from Edward James Olmos, as can Martin Sheen take it away from Denzel.

“The hardest thing for an actor to do is be himself,” said Hoffman, whose casting company credits include “The Brady Bunch Movie” and many TV commercials.

His advice to an aspiring actor: “Get a manager.”

But Olivarez is not discouraged.

He said some of his alumni are beginning to have a little success, landing small roles with such Spanish-language television networks as Telemundo and Univision.

That encourages others, said 32-year-old Juan Glezz, who has appeared regularly on “Lente Loco” (“Crazy Lens”), Univision’s version of “Candid Camera.”

“At least I got my face on television, but it’s not easy,” Glezz said. “I’m getting tired of playing the bad guys” on the show.

Even though the closest Olivarez has gotten to Hollywood has been his job as a nurse at the Motion Picture & Television Hospital in Woodland Hills, he said he found a way to let his creativity flow: by opening his own theater where no one would be turned away.

“Here, everybody has a chance,” he said. “We all want to be discovered.”