No one cares about you when you're in jail.
— Richard Cabral
I never became an actor for people to want to take pictures with me or wanting my autograph. I feel I am nothing more special than the next living soul, but I understand that I work in entertainment, and this attraction comes with the territory.
Your only true obligation in a gang is to be committed and be there when your brothers need you.
Just like the rest of the world, I became a product of my environment, and this environment was gang culture.
If you grow up on the good side of the tracks, you're going to belong to something over there. If you grow up on the bad side of the tracks, you're going to belong to something over there. It's not rocket science.
I believe God talks to us in mysterious ways. I knew if I did not pay attention to His message, I was going to do life in prison, or I was going to end up dead.
Being an artist, being an actor, it's about telling stories that could heal, that could open up discussion that could make the community better.
The true meaning of an artist/actor is opening my heart to the audience and, at the same time, opening their heart.
Through sharing my pain, I can possibly heal your pain. There is no other feeling like it. Money doesn't compare. This is the true meaning of art.
I grew up in East Los Angeles, which is the biggest population of Mexican-Americans in America. I was born and raised there.
I really embrace the person and the life that I came from because that made me who I am today.
The lifestyle that I grew up in, it was passed on to me. I didn't know there was another world.
Art saved my life.
I didn't grow up with any brothers, but I have my cousins, and I had my good friends, so I know what it is to have that bro relationship.
There are many things in common with my life and my character in 'American Crime.' My upbringing has definitely helped me out in this role.
When you're in a gang, you go through life like any other individual. You have certain obligations, but you are not forced to do anything.
Homeboy Industries is a healing center for broken children. I was a broken child, and they showed me how to put all those pieces back together. It's not about being a gangster. It's about being a man or a woman trying to recover and live better.
In society, you are taught to belong. You have to belong to something.
There's comes a point when people who have lived a life of crime get tired and want to change.
It's about being a voice in the community. There's so many ways to be a voice, and that's what I'm figuring out.
I can't point my finger on a 'dream role,' but the days that I'm able to fulfill the stories of the 'hood/barrio on film, those will be great days.
I'm definitely not joking around on set.
My father figures were all gang members.
My family had been involved in gangs since the 1970s.
I was one step away from getting my life taken away, whether it was life in prison or being dead on the streets. But I was saved.
Audiences are more drawn in to what they can relate to, so it would be stupid not to have great Latino films for the Latino audience.
As an actor, I draw from myself.
I think 98% of gang members in Los Angeles would agree that being a gang is just like being part of a community.
If we grow up in these communities where we have gangs, well, what do you think we're going to belong to? That's what happened to me and what's still happening to hundreds of thousands of other individuals.
I spent my life behind bars, and what people don't know is getting out of prison is really nerve-racking - you're not used to society; you're not used to the world going by so fast - so to step on that lot was quite overwhelming.
Nobody succeeds on their own. Someone has to be there to show them the way, and if you give that experience to a person on the street - a gang member, a prisoner - he might succeed. That's how it was for me.
It's nothing like changing or helping a person find themselves, but who would've thought that I would make it to a point in my life where somebody would be naming a damn burrito after me.
Majority of minds are warped into the belief of the only person worth helping is themself.
The agricultural fields throughout the Southwest, those jobs needed to be filled, and who were the ones to do it? It was the Mexicans.
In this society, you have to belong to something, I feel, and all we have in the neighborhood is a gang.
I remember my first thing was 'CSI: Miami.' I played a Cuban gangster. And that was it. I was like, 'Wow, I don't have to clean toilets.' I could actually dress up and get paid equivalent to that. So that was my introduction into the Hollywood industry.
I didn't know that I could be an actor until I was 25 years old, and now I continue to go back to the prisons and probation camps and the inner city to say that you don't have to go through the violence, through the trauma like I did.
