Biography

Born in Puerto Rico, but grew up in the East Village section of Manhattan, in New York City. In an interview, he explained that his mother traveled to New York fifteen minutes after his birth.

He was a social worker, working especially with young people. He also was very involved with his community, arranging events, before becoming an actor.

He prefers his first name pronounced LOO-ee.

In the show Community, he is portrayed as a former student of Greendale. Ironically he attended City College the rival school of Greendale.

Performed in several spots for Cabot Cheese, which is based near where he lives in Cabot, Vermont, living the life of a gentleman farmer.

My all time favorite actor is Marlon Brando. I admired how effortless and how real he was in his performance in On the Waterfront (1954)." To me, he wasn't acting. He was living the role. And that's what I admire about good acting. It's real.

Leading men crash and burn. Character actors are around forever.

Never thought about pursuing acting as a career. Back then we were mainly performing at block parties. It was a labor of love and it was a lot of fun. The best I thought I could do was maybe make a few extra bucks on the side. All I really wanted was to earn enough to buy myself a used car so I could drive out to Orchard Beach at the weekend. This whole thing is a complete fluke.

I've become, like, this farmer. I live on the top of a mountain and I look out at the birds fighting over the bird table instead of guys fighting over a parking space. It's about as far from my old neighborhood as you can get. But you know what they say: you can take the kid out of the Lower East Side but you can't take the Lower East Side out of the kid.

(On getting involved in Nothing Like the Holidays (2008)) I got a call from Freddy [Rodríguez]. He said, "I'm doing this movie in Chicago, and I'd like to know if you would like to do a cameo in it." I go, "Yeah, bro, anything to support you, you're a good buddy of mine." So they sent me the scene-originally it was this scene involving the priest. So I read it, and then we got into a whole conversation, and I said, "It's okay, but I think when a priest shows up to somebody's house, there needs to be more of an impact there. So we need to just beef up the scene, make it worth my while." We talked and I gave him my notes. About a week later, I get a phone call. They said, "Hey man, would you mind checking out the part of Johnny?" I go, "Oh my God, this is right down my alley." Everybody has a cousin Johnny in their family. Everyone has that older cousin who wishes he were still young, and he looks out for all the younger siblings and cousins and stuff like that. I just dug the whole premise of the script, and they were compiling a really great cast of actors. I said, "Oh man, I'd love to be a part of this." I showed up and my whole thing was, "I want to be a part of this family." Pretty much that's how I approached it, and I got so much love from it, and gave so much love back to it. It's one of those projects that I was totally proud of. Not just because I was making a Latin movie about a Latin family, but because I was making a good movie, a good story, a universal story that could apply to any family in any corner of this country or the world, for that matter, because we always come together, the family at least once a year, or once every couple of years.