John Leguizamo says that starring in the “Ice Age” franchise was life-changing.
“It got me a brownstone,” he exclusively told Page Six in a recent interview. “It got me two extra homes, it got me a beachfront house in the Hamptons, it got me two pools!”
Leguizamo, 63, voiced Sid the Sloth in the cartoon series that centers on a group of mammals surviving the Pleistocene ice age.
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The “Carlito’s Way” actor shared that the success is even sweeter because “nobody thought” it was going to be a hit.
“They didn’t even have toys or merchandise,” he recalled. “[Then] it comes out and it’s a blockbuster and it’s beloved.”
Leguizamo told us that he was paid scale for the first movie, which came out in 2002. By the third film, he and the other stars “were asking for more money” due to the success of the franchise.
“We were asking because it was so huge. I mean, it’s over a billion-dollar industry,” he explained, claiming that Fox animation “tried to cut us out” by testing other actors to do the voices.
Leguizamo noted, however, that he and fellow actors Ray Romano, Denis Leary and Chris Wedge are now in negotiations for a seventh film, joking that the next movie could pay for “a helicopter!”
The “Moulin Rouge!” star’s latest project is “The Green Veil,” an anthology series based on a shameful period in American history when “the US government was involved in taking Native American children from their homes and putting them up for adoption” to benefit oil companies.
Leguizamo, who portrays an FBI agent that he says is ”going around snatching Native American children from their families,” admitted to Page Six that it was difficult to shake off the controversial character.
“First of all, we were doing 20 pages a day because it was a tight budget. It was hard to raise money for because of the subject matter, so it was a passion project,” he recalled.
“I was so exhausted, so burnt out,” he confessed. “I took it home, I took home all this negativity, all this PTSD from doing that character.”
Leguizamo added that filming even gave him nightmares at times.
“I did everything to shake it and get it out of my body,” he told us. “I’m putting on my favorite tunes, I’m partying, [thinking], ‘I need to shake this and enjoy life.’”
