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It's funny, because I've never thought of myself as a Hispanic actor, like in 'American Gangster,' I'm playing an Italian. I've always been fortunate enough to have been allowed to play all these diverse roles.

I like to consider myself an actor who just happens to be Hispanic.

I'm very happy to have the heritage that I do, but I'm not wanting to be 'the Latino actor.' I just want to be 'an actor.'

I wanted to be cast because I'm an actor and not because of how I look or where I'm from. I'm brown. I want to be able to play a Spanish girl some day or a Mexican girl and learn the language. That's what actors do: we act.

As an ambiguously non-white actor, I've been able to play light-skinned African American guys, Latinos, and I don't think that I've ever had to play some kind of ethnic stereotype or something that was typed specifically for a person of color.

It's interesting: I think, as a Latino actor, the biggest challenge is being called 'Latino' because immediately, the world has a perception of what that means.

A Latino actor can't play this and a Latino actor can't play that because they're Latino.

I think all Latino actors want to be storytellers first. I want to be an actor first, and then I want to be Latina.