John Leguizamo

Mary-Louise Parker, John Leguizamo and Cheyenne Jackson will be among the new faces joining the nominating committee for next year's Tony Awards. The committee decides on the Tony nominees by seeing all of the productions for the season and then voting for the various categories. The committee's new members will also include playwright Rick Elice, composer Adam Guettel, author and journalist John Darnton, choreographer Donald Byrd, projection designer Wendall K. Harrington and costume designer Ann Hould-Ward.

Click here to download TV listings for the week of July 8 - 14 in PDF format TV listings for the week of July 8 - 14 in PDF format are also available here This week's TV Movies     SERIES The Ricky Gervais Show: Appropriately enough for a season finale, Karl describes his most memorable moment from the past year. Also Stephen shares an embarrassing story about buying contraceptives and reads entries from Karl's diary (9 p.m. HBO)

John Leguizamo isn't bugged by the failure of "The Pest." He's got too much going on, with a role in the comic book-inspired "Spawn" and parts in "A Brother's Kiss," the upcoming "Body Count" and "Dr. Dolittle" (he's the voice of The Rat), not to mention a one-man stage show, "Freaky," which opens on Broadway this fall. Leguizamo, 33, divides his time between homes in Echo Park and New York's Lower East Side.

Click here to download TV listings for the week of July 8 - 14 in PDF format TV listings for the week of July 8 - 14 in PDF format are also available here This week's TV Movies     CBS This Morning Cristin Milioti; Steve Kazee. (N) 7 a.m. KCBS Today Anne Hathaway; fattening foods; summer entertaining; sun protection; John Leguizamo. (N) 7 a.m. KNBC KTLA Morning News (N) 7 a.m. KTLA Good Morning America Author Carol Alt; delivery room paparazzi; roller coasters.

In his new Broadway play, "Ghetto Klown," John Leguizamo gets into shoving matches on movie sets, is sucker-punched by a best friend, is nearly sued for libel by his own father and gets kicked out of the house by an angry, fed-up wife. But the truly epic battles in the one-person show are with himself, pitting, as he put it, "a driven perfectionist, workaholic egomaniac and control freak" against a tortured, self-doubting artist trying to get his groove back. "The goal was to create an opus magnum," says Leguizamo, "To go more raw, more honest, deeper and wilder than I'd ever done before.

It's been a high-profile 2005 for Emmy-winning, Tony-nominated actor John Leguizamo. It started with his portrayal of a besieged inmate in the "Assault on Precinct 13" remake, continued with "The Honeymooners" and George Romero's zombie picture "Land of the Dead," and includes the suspense flick "The Alibi" later in the year.

John Leguizamo's grandmother was wrong. In his 1998 Emmy Award-winning, one-man show "Freak," Leguizamo told audiences she was convinced Latinos wouldn't make it into the next century because she never saw any on "Star Trek." But the future is here, and the Bogota-born Leguizamo just signed the biggest development deal CBS has entered into all year. He's also returned for a second season as the narrator of Nickelodeon's "The Brothers Garcia," and his fourth one-man show, "John Leguizamo Live!"

The word used to stick in his throat, making him sound like a car engine that doesn't quite have the spark to turn over. "I lo-lo-lo-. I lo-lo-lo- .... " John Leguizamo just couldn't get "love" out, he confesses in his autobiographical one-man show "Sexaholix ... a love story," which he is performing at the Ahmanson Theatre. Sooner or later, his behavior sent girlfriends walking out the door. The actor's emotional constipation was, perhaps, the result of a dysfunctional upbringing.

When "Freak" tried out around the country last year, the subtitle of John Leguizamo's latest set of comedy sketches was "His Most Dangerous Work Yet." Maybe it was. Maybe it wasn't. By the time the manic solo opened Thursday night at the Cort Theatre, alas, the most dangerous part of the modestly engaging act was someone's decision to put it in a Broadway theater and charge Broadway prices. Maybe we're not getting something here.

On Manhattan's Lower East Side, a vagrant ambles by a street corner where a photographer is posing actor John Leguizamo against a mural painted on a building. "Hey man," he asks a bystander, "isn't that dude a fighter? What's his name?" "John Leguizamo. But he's an actor," comes the reply. "He's in a show called 'Mambo Mouth.' " " 'Mumble Mouth,' huh?" says the grizzly denizen of these mean streets as he walks on. "I knew he was a boxer." Leguizamo laughs at the story. "A boxer, huh?" he says.

Mary-Louise Parker, John Leguizamo and Cheyenne Jackson will be among the new faces joining the nominating committee for next year's Tony Awards. The committee decides on the Tony nominees by seeing all of the productions for the season and then voting for the various categories. The committee's new members will also include playwright Rick Elice, composer Adam Guettel, author and journalist John Darnton, choreographer Donald Byrd, projection designer Wendall K. Harrington and costume designer Ann Hould-Ward.

Christmas loves a franchise — any already beloved thing that it can dress in tinsel and holly or wrap itself around like mistletoe. This year, as every year, it will be especially (and extra-specially) Christmas on television, where most every sitcom and cartoon — and even the odd drama or two — will nod in sincerity or in irony toward the season and its rites and sentiments. And then there are the Christmas specials, which aim to be so especially extra-special that they will be asked perpetually to return in Christmases future.

In his new Broadway play, "Ghetto Klown," John Leguizamo gets into shoving matches on movie sets, is sucker-punched by a best friend, is nearly sued for libel by his own father and gets kicked out of the house by an angry, fed-up wife. But the truly epic battles in the one-person show are with himself, pitting, as he put it, "a driven perfectionist, workaholic egomaniac and control freak" against a tortured, self-doubting artist trying to get his groove back. "The goal was to create an opus magnum," says Leguizamo, "To go more raw, more honest, deeper and wilder than I'd ever done before.

Where you've seen him Romany Malco's breakthrough performance came in "The 40-Year-Old Virgin" as Jay, the friend who actually has success with women. Notable appearances include: "Too Legit: The MC Hammer Story," as the balloon-trousered rapper; "The Tuxedo"; "Blades of Glory"; "The Love Guru" and the first three seasons of Showtime's "Weeds." His rap group College Boyz had a hit in 1991 with "Victim of the Ghetto"; he went on to produce for CeCe Peniston, Randy Crawford and others.

DESPITE cutting his teeth on racy, more unconventional fare, John Leguizamo wants to show the world that he can also be a regular guy. In fact, the 43-year-old actor says he was drawn to the part of Julian, his character in M. Night Shyamalan's thriller "The Happening," because he was so, well . . . normal. "I liked that he was an average Joe Schmo," Leguizamo says. "I hadn't really played that too often -- pretty much it's edgier characters. So it was nice to tap into that sort of side of me that's kind of that averagearooney guy."

If you were going to show what happens to a man who loses the best part of himself, you'd want to cast John Leguizamo, who has spent his career leaping from one extreme characterization to another. In "The Take," Leguizamo is armored-car driver Felix De La Pena, a sweet-natured family man in L.A.'s Eastside who tosses bromides to his young son ("Make good choices!") as he leaves for work.

In his solo show "Freak," John Leguizamo, 33, mines the adolescent traumas of feeling like "an alien outsider." An immigrant from Colombia, the actor tells stories of being a fish out of water in this autobiographical play--which opened last February on Broadway and became an instant success. It has, perhaps ironically given the subject, brought Leguizamo his greatest acceptance yet, including two Tony nominations, one as co-author (with David Bar Katz) and one as the show's star.

Barbara Cook, John Leguizamo and Elaine Stritch will bring their latest shows to the Ahmanson Theatre in the spring. Cook will perform in her Tony-nominated "Mostly Sondheim" Feb. 28-March 9, accompanied by pianist Wally Harper and bassist Jon Burr. Leguizamo will perform his autobiographical monologue "Sexaholix ... a Love Story" March 11-23. And Stritch will tell stories and sing April 8-27 in her "Elaine Stritch at Liberty," which won a Tony Award this year for Special Theatrical Event.

ROSIE PEREZ is an actor, director and choreographer. Her IFC documentary about Puerto Ricans in the U.S. and on the island is "Yo soy Boricua, pa'que tu lo sepas!" and was just released on DVD. The title translates as "I am Boricua, just so you know!" How did you become a documentarian? Really out of frustration. Not being able to get what I wanted made. I wanted to do a feature film on the sterilization of Puerto Rican women. I couldn't get the financing. At the time it was the early '90s.

First-time writer-director Renee Chabria's sincerity and commitment to "Sueno" are so complete they override its sentimental streak and some overly familiar plotting. Chabria inspires her cast to reveal the kindness and caring in her characters in a most endearing manner. "Sueno," which means "dream" in Spanish, is a sweet-natured film, steeped in richly varied and seductive Latin music.