John Leguizamo is known for edgy character roles in some of the most acclaimed films of the last decade—everything from playing the ferocious Tybalt in Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo and Juliet to a drag queen in To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar. So what’s he doing in Love in the Time of Cholera playing an overprotective father, and an aristocrat at that? Acting, that’s what. As Lorenzo Daza, the father of the beautiful Fermina, Leguizamo gets into the part of a man who’s looking out for what’s best for his daughter, even when it’s getting in the way of an epic love. It turns out, though, being the overprotective dad was the easy part for Leguizamo—he has a young daughter, after all.

When your daughter Allegra is old enough to date, are you going to be that kind of protective dad?
This was a dry run for me. I thought I was going to use reverse psychology, you know if a bum comes in go 'Yeah, he's great!' and then try to sabotage him. But that might not work; it may be too subtle. My character is like this universal dad. Every dad who loves his daughter is not going to want her to go with the penniless slacker loser poet bum, when she could go out with someone who's successful. That's what I want for my daughter.

So that was an easy role for you to play?
It was easy in those terms. Then aging me to be 60+ was interesting. I've never done that before. I had a great movement teacher—he showed me how to walk so I wasn't becoming like a cartoon.

Was that scary, to see yourself old?
It wasn't really great. 60 for me is not going to be the new 50 if I look like that.

Had you read the book before you did the movie?
I had read 100 Years of Solitude, but I hadn't read this one. […] Then I got the movie so I read it in English and Spanish. It's captivating, man, it's incredible. It's a man's love story. I didn't know that going in. Yeah he loves this one woman with everything in his heart, waits for her 51 years, but he waits for her by going to bed with 620 other women. I can wait like that! We'd all like to wait like that. 600 of the finest Latin women you'll ever seen in your life--I can totally wait. Then he says he's a virgin at 80--you've never seen 80-year old people hit skins like that on camera.

How much room is there to improvise when you're working with an acclaimed piece of literature?
There's a little bit of room. You've got to understand, it's not really Shakespeare. It is a great piece of literature, but the part of it that's really important and impactful is not the text from the translation. It's the thoughts--eternal peace. That's the beauty of the novel. Of course we're allowed to add a little bit.

How much rehearsal went into this?
Lots. I think it was incredible. Most of the great directors I've worked with--De Palma, Spike Lee--like rehearsals. Rehearsals make a huge difference. […] In this process, we all rehearsed the scenes together with Mike and talked about the characters, what he wanted, what I wanted. That's what you want, your ideas to merge together. That's the beauty of it. You want a little combativeness of ideas. I wanted to make sure this guy wasn't just a villain, some obnoxious creep dad. I wanted to humanize him and bring a little humor to it.

What did you do to make him less of a villain?
I tried, when I was talking to her, to understand that it was a tough love. It wasn't anything but out of pure, incredible love--that's real love. Anybody can be a friend to their kids, but that's not really parenting. I know that.

You're one of few people who's made the transition from comedy to drama. Do you ever miss stand-up, and do you think comedy is harder than drama?
Comedy is definitely harder. You can't make mistakes in comedy, then you have no laughs. If you fumble the line, if your timing is off--it's unforgiving. Drama, you can make mistakes, and mistakes are usually your best stuff anyway, since it's more real and your emotions are coming through. I miss doing comedies, absolutely. I love the drama, I love the challenge of that, but I definitely miss--not standup, theater. I didn't really do standup.

You have some of the best Latino actors in the business working on this film. Was that part of the appeal of joining the project?
The appeal was coming from everywhere. The appeal was coming from this great piece of literature—[Marquez is] one of the great Latin giants of literature. Being in Colombia, where I was born. Javier Bardem, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Benjamin Bratt--working with them. And Mike Newell. […] The great thing about it was, we all really hung out together. That doesn't usually happen.

What was like being in Colombia?
It was awesome. [Cartagena] is one of the greatest cities in the Americas. It's one of the oldest and largest European forted cities. […] It's phenomenal. No cars allowed, you can only go by horse and carriage. Every restaurants got a salsa band playing live music, like that Wim Wenders movie Buena Vista Social Club-- that good old guys playing music.

You said you read both the Spanish and English versions of the story. How close is the film to the essence of the book?
That's what's incredible about this piece of literature--the structure is so tight, like an old Greek forum or pyramid, it's so perfect. It's perfect for a movie. […] In terms of the Spanish to the English, there's a big difference. In Spanish it's James Joyce-ian; then you understand his incredible greatness. It's language from the 1800s that's obsolete that he researched; he makes up language. I almost got an aneurysm reading it in Spanish. In English you get a really good sense of the story and the essence of it, but you don't get the literary fireworks.

Given that the book, especially in Spanish, is such a work of art, can a movie do justice to the book? Or is it just a different medium?
It is a different medium. You've got to respect that, because otherwise you're going to fail. You want to give as much due respect to he novel as you can, but then you've got to depart from there and go 'What really works on film?' Otherwise you're going to fail on both ends. You've really got to speak truth to what works visually, because now it's a visual medium.

We're often told in this country that Colombia is a dangerous place. How do you feel about the perception of Colombia here?
That's why I love this movie, because it shows people that Latin people are intellectuals, that we are literary, that we have a great culture, that we are really creative. So that's really important on a lot of levels. […] In Cartagena, we didn't see any guns or anything like that. […] I'm not going to say that there aren't problems outside, on the outskirts, because there are problems out there. Terrible things are happening, but it's on the outskirts, it's far from where you're at.

Have you ever had a case of unrequited love?
I had tons of that what I was a teenager, are you kidding me? Plenty of girls who didn't requite me, so I had to requite myself.

x Can you tell us about a lucky break in your career?
I guess it had to be Mambo Mouth. I was just doing that because I loved one-man shows, and to do that, and then the reviews it got, and then to see Pacino in the audience, and Raul Julia… all those people in the audience, it was incredible. Arthur Miller was there.

What led to that?
The late 80s was that whole performance art stuff. It was really big in Manhattan, and so it was available-it was fecund, downtown was fecund. There were all these places and everybody was doing crazy experimental stuff, it was so exciting. I wanted to do my thing, my thing was different from everybody else's, but I still had a chance. I got incredible reception--I didn't expect it.

How did you prepare for it?
I rehearsed at home, and I rehearsed for my brother. I used to test everything on my brother, and he used to hate everything, and that's how I knew it would work.

Can you talk about working with Pacino and DeNiro on [the upcoming] Righteous Kill?
It was amazing--the two greatest American actors of our time. They're my heroes, and it was incredible. […] It was pretty wild to see. They're different schools of acting-DeNiro becomes a character, and Pacino is more himself.

What was it like coming together with this cast?
We got along really easy--I don't know if it was Cartegena or what. We would all have dinner together and goof all the time. Everybody was really incredibly friendly. I think that was good that everyone was from a different part [of the world], because nobody was competitive with each other, there was no ego battle. Everybody was really generous and cool. Javier is the most generous party-giver, the craziest party themes. His parties had themes. One time he got people to ship in sand to his apartment and it was Jamaican theme, if you can tell what that means. It's a euphemism…yeah.

How does being in costume or being on the period set help your acting?
It totally helps. It's like mask work--all of a sudden I look in a mirror and I've got all this woven hair and the grays and age spots and wrinkles around my eyes. They put glue around your eyes, and then you squeeze real tight and then your eyes look like a testicle. I'm padded, I've got this costume, we're in real houses from the 1600s. The cobblestone streets, everything's by horse. It's great. All of a sudden you are taken back easily, you don't have to pretend. It's not like it's a blue screen.

What about working with Giovanna Mezzogiorno?
Oh man… my daughter. What a daughter. It was great. We really tried to make the father and [daughter] connection. She's fiery, she's just as stubborn as I am. We tried to work something out so we were both equally fiery, temperamental.