Homecomings

In the Christmas movie “Nothing Like the Holidays,” Freddy Rodriguez plays an Iraq war veteran honorably discharged with a slight eye injury, but racked with guilt over the belief he may have caused the death of his buddy during a skirmish with insurgents.

To prepare for the film, opening Friday, Rodriguez talked with several who had served in the war -- and he ended up feeling more than a little shamefaced.

“This is a terrible comparison,” confesses the 33-year-old star of such films as “Planet Terror” and the HBO series “Six Feet Under.” “But I remember being in Napa Valley making my first film, ‘A Walk in the Clouds.’ I was 19 and so incredibly homesick and culture-shocked. It was my first time away from home, and I was still living with my parents.”

Rodriguez shakes his head with embarrassment. “Here I was feeling the way I was feeling at 19, sitting in a cushy hotel room, eating from craft services and getting to act opposite Keanu Reeves and Anthony Quinn,” he says.

“That was so minuscule to what these guys were going through. I wanted to capture what they must have gone through on their return home and as they try to get reassimilated.”

The ensemble drama -- about a Puerto Rican family from Chicago which reunites after several years to celebrate the holidays and the fact that the youngest son, Jesse, has returned from the war -- also marks Rodriguez’s first foray into executive producing.

It stars Alfred Molina and Elizabeth Pena as the parents, John Leguizamo as Jesse’s older brother, who is a high-powered attorney with an ambitious executive wife (Debra Messing), and Vanessa Ferlito as the older sister, who is a struggling actress in L.A. Rodriguez makes clear that he doesn’t consider “Nothing Like the Holidays” a “Latin” film.

“It’s an American film that happens to revolve around a Latin family,” he says. “That was our objective when we were putting it together. We wanted to make these people as general as possible, because if you are not Latin, you will be able to relate to the family.”

Producers Robert Teitel and George Tillman Jr. (“Soul Food”) grew up in Chicago and have known Rodriguez for several years. Teitel came up with the idea to do a Christmas movie about a dysfunctional family. Rodriguez says the concept appealed to him: “I always try to do something different. I was interested in producing, and Bob said, ‘Why don’t you come on board and help me put it together?’ ”

The film was shot in Chicago’s predominantly Puerto Rican neighborhood of Humboldt Park, where Rodriguez was born and reared. Though Rodriguez spends most of the year living with his wife (who was his high school sweetheart) and their two children in Los Angeles, they spend summer and Christmas holidays in Chicago.

“Christmas is a big deal in my family,” he says. “Christmas is a pretty packed house.”

And is it all as dysfunctional as his movie family?

“Even more so,” he says, laughing.

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susan.king@latimes.com

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Where you’ve seen him

Freddy Rodriguez made his film debut at 19 as Anthony Quinn’s son in 1995’s “A Walk in the Clouds” and has since appeared in movies such as “Can’t Hardly Wait” and “Dead Presidents.” But he’s perhaps best known for his TV work: As the ambitious mortician Federico Diaz on the HBO series “Six Feet Under,” he received an Emmy nomination, two Alma Awards, three Imagen Awards, a Nosotros Award and two Screen Actors Guild Awards. Last season, he returned to television as America Ferrera’s love interest, Giovanni, on ABC’s “Ugly Betty.” His film credits include the zombie thriller “Planet Terror,” the disaster film “Poseidon,” “Bobby” and “Harsh Times,” and he’s worked with an eclectic group of directors, including Robert Rodriguez (no relation), Wolfgang Petersen, David Ayer, Emilio Estevez, M. Night Shyamalan, Alfonso Arau and the Hughes brothers.