Acting almost seems like a supplementary career for Edward James Olmos, whose voice can be heard behind Chief Tannabok in the animated action romp, Road To El Dorado, which opens today.
Olmos (above) came into the world in East Los Angeles on February 24, 1947, and he's stayed in LA ever since, working tirelessly with local charities and welfare groups. But it's his acting career that has given him the financial clout to help make a difference in his home town, and it's a career that almost never got off the ground. Placed in his Mexican-American mother's custody when he was aged seven, Olmos at first hoped to make it as a baseball player. But by his early teens, rock'n' roll had come calling. At 15, he was already fronting rock bands, and by the early 1970s he could be found working in various clubs on LA's famous Sunset Strip.
As he tells it, Olmos was always more actor than singer on stage so, with a little prompting from friends, he dumped the guitar and started treading the boards. It wasn't long before his gruff voice and swarthy looks were used to good effect on TV shows such as Hawaii Five-O. In 1979 he went to Broadway with the play Zoot Suit, for which he won a Tony nomination. And in 1984 came the role for which he is most remembered - Lieutenant Castillo in the pastel purgatory that was TV's Miami Vice. He won an Emmy for his efforts and then hit the big-screen heights with an Oscar nomination for his part as the feisty teacher in Stand And Deliver (1986). Never short of work, he has also tried his hand at directing.
His American Me in 1992 won critical acclaim but no new friends with the LA gangs it depicted. But Olmos' best role through all this has been as a humanitarian.
He is the US Goodwill Ambassador for Unicef, and works with hospitals and educational boards throughout LA. He makes as many as 150 appearances a year, talking to LA's kids, and using his own story of success as an example and an inspiration.