MONTREAL — Latinos are getting a better shake in Hollywood these days than they were when John Leguizamo got cast as a drug thug in an episode of TV's "Miami Vice" in the 1980s.

"We have so much more power, especially behind the scenes," he said in an interview Wednesday.

"We have a lot more power than we ever had before -- directing, camera operators, writers, producers. That is what's really taking hold and it's more important than just talent in front of the camera."

Leguizamo, who has authored several one-man stage shows, says technology is also making the movie industry more democratic although he notes "the distribution part of it is kind of held in the hands of a few."

But figuring out how to make things work is the story of Leguizamo's life, and it's dynamically depicted in his biographical one-man show, "Klass Klown," which is being presented at Montreal's Just For Laughs Festival.

It takes the star of such fare as TV's "ER" and movies including "Miracle at St. Anna," "Summer of Sam" and "Moulin Rouge" from his impoverished New York youth through the days he struggled to make it in Hollywood.

Leguizamo, who says he wanted to be a "creative force" when he started out, says a person's struggle to find their own identity is a universal tale.

"We all have to deal with bosses, we all have to deal with getting fired, with being replaced," he said.

"Everybody's trying to find out who they are in their life. We're all trying to search for that."

Leguizamo's father was unsparing with him and wasn't crazy about him being an actor. His father even tried to sue him over the way he was depicted in one of Leguizamo's plays.

The two reconciled when Leguizamo was an adult.

Leguizamo, whose family is originally from Colombia, hit his stride when he started speaking his mind and veering from attempts to pigeonhole him. It started when he was in theatre and it fuelled his film career, he says.

"I started to find my freedom in movies. It was a tough battle because movies are very corporate. To speak your mind is a tough thing. There's a lot of resistance."

And he's had resistance from pretty big stars. He says Kurt Russell apparently didn't appreciate him improvising some lines in the 1996 action flick "Executive Decision" and told him so bluntly. The lines stayed in the movie.

That was the same film he says he got shoved into a wall by Steven Seagal after he laughed at what he considered to be the actor's pompous attitude.

"Seagal had an influence -- an adverse influence that I made positive," Leguizamo says, explaining he wasn't going to be belittled by peers. "I mean, the dude . . . I don't know. He's such a strange character."

Leguizamo, who's pretty friendly in person, credits his grandfather with being one of the greatest influences in his life. He taught him to accept himself and find joy in life.

"It was an incredible sense of humour that he had and I think that's what he really passed on to me, a resilience in that humour."

His grandfather is a key figure in "Klass Klown," where Leguizamo plays all the characters with a chameleon-like quality.

When he's depicting his grandfather, his body sags and his face gently contorts so that he almost looks like another person, a trait movie audiences appreciated when he portrayed a saucy Latina transvestite in 1995's "To Wong Foo, Thanks For Everything, Julie Newmar."

"I've always really enjoyed that part of it, always transforming into something different and just falling into someone else's shoes," said the trained method actor.

He says, for instance, when he played his grandfather, "I started to feel totally different. I start feeling my whole body aging and it's kind of fun and incredible because I'm not really manipulating it as much as it starts to take me over."

Leguizamo is hoping to take "Klass Klown" to Broadway but in the meantime the actor who voiced Sid the Sloth in the "Ice Age" animated movies has plenty to keep him busy.

Besides other film projects in the works, he'll be at this year's Toronto International Film Festival to premiere "Vanishing on 7th Street," in which he plays a film projectionist who finds people starting to disappear all around him.

Leguizamo likes the variety of working in TV, movies and theatre although he says the best scripts now are on TV and the stage. And he loves to write his own stuff.

"It's incredibly satisfying. It's incredibily difficult but at the end, I'm enjoying the process more than I ever have before, just shaping it and letting it happen because that's really where the fun and joy is. It's like a puzzle in a Rubik's cube. You've got to keep messing with it until it sings."