Pepe Serna (born July 23, 1944) is an American film and television actor and artist.Serna's first break in movies came in 1970 on the Roger Corman directed film Student Nurses. Over the years Serna has appeared in over 100 films, most notably Car Wash and Scarface directed by Brian De Palma, where he played Montana's friend Angel Fernandez (whose character was involved in the notorious "chainsaw scene"). He has also appeared on stage, including his solo show El Ruco, Chuco, Cholo, Pachuco which is Serna's version of the panorama of Latino cultural history.Serna has been honored by the Screen Actors Guild Heritage Achievement Award; the League of United Latin American Citizens, and the Estrella Award for Arts & Culture from the Orange Country Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.
I was never in awe of anybody. This is what I was going to do my whole life and I'm supposed to be there like anybody else. But it's kind of interesting, after the fact, to realize that I was directed by Carl Reiner. And Waldo Salt came to my apartment with his wife and we smoked a couple of doobies. I've never been a film buff and it's just amazing. It would have been different had I been more educated in what I was doing. Maybe not. Who knows? It was easy breezy. They say, "Show me an actor who has never had stage fright and I'll show you a bad actor." That's probably me, because I've never had stage fright.
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[on whether being typecast in token Chicano roles ever bothered him] I didn't let it. Because that was the reality. A lot of people did, and they didn't work. That's why I worked so much. I said, "This is what I wanted to do all of my life and I enjoy all of it." Whether it's stage, or television, movies. To me it's all the same. It's all a gift. However, I have been in the right place at the right time but I really could have been in so much more. The whole diversity thing wasn't there and I didn't buy into it too much myself growing up. But looking back, there really wasn't a lot of opportunities. I auditioned for Richard Gere's part in Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977). I auditioned for Eric Roberts' part in King of the Gypsies (1978). It wasn't like I didn't get to audition for incredible things, but, like anything, it could have been something great. They asked me, "Where are you from," y'know, Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977) was a New York guy.
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[on acting in movies that are shot all over the world] That's the lucky thing of being a character actor, you get to enjoy life. You're not just going to the hotel to the set. You get paid vacations to play around.
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Everybody is the same. Every actor, every situation is the same. I just hope it's as much fun for everybody else as it is for me. That's usually my goal, because I don't know anyone else who has as much fun as me.
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Being from improv, you'd always go out and do accents or whatever. You wouldn't judge yourself, you'd just do it. You had the freedom to be as bad as you can be.
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About the roles he's offered: "I'm usually killing or get killed, because I'm Latino."
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Honored by the Screen Actors Guild Heritage Achievement Award; the League of United Latin American Citizens; and the prestigious Estrella Award for Arts & Culture from the Orange Country Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.
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Recently commissioned by the Los Angeles Annenberg Metropolitan Project and the Mark Taper Foundation to paint an inspirational canvas on the subject of reading. It was turned into a poster and given to students in the Los Angeles Unified School District.
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Played Jennifer Lopez's father twice in different 1990's CBS series: "Second Chances" and "Hotel Malibu" before she became a superstar.
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Recently lent his vocal talents to the Fox hit series "The PJ's" in the part of part of Sanchez, who speaks with the aid of a voice box and is the only Hispanic character in Eddie Murphy's series.
$300,000
