Actor Hector Elizondo’s 50-Year Career is Honored

Veteran actor Hector Elizondo was honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award for his 50-year career that has included theater, movies and television, by his colleagues in the Hispanic Organization of Latino Actors, or HOLA, during its annual gala in New York.

“Tonight you have touched my heart,” Elizondo said, as his fellow actors of all ages, many of them young, rose to their feet and applauded at a restaurant in Manhattan’s popular Battery Park.

Elizondo, son of a Basque father and Puerto Rican mother, and who grew up in the New York neighborhood of Harlem, recalled his father, who taught him to speak two languages but did not allow him to speak a word of English at home.

Before the awards ceremony, Elizondo told Efe that it was “a privilege to be a mentor, to set an example (for young actors), but, I never really tried to be an example. I just live my life and do my job the best I can.”

“I don’t have a lot of ambition, but I like these young people who have spirit, who have talent,” the actor said, whose career has included theater, where his acting in “Steambath” won him an Obie prize, which honors the work of actors in Off Broadway productions, while in movies he appeared in “Pretty Woman,” “Runaway Bride” and “The Princess Diaries,” all directed by Gary Marshall.

He has also been a television standout in series from “Chicago Hope,” which won him an Emmy, and “Grey’s Anatomy,” to the current sitcom “Last Man Standing” which airs on ABC.

Published in Latino Daily News