John Leguizamo has been in a lot of movies over the course of his long and successful career, ranging from “Moulin Rouge!” to his latest role in Christopher Nolan‘s “The Odyssey.”
In the epic drama, Leguizamo plays Eumaeus, loyal servant to Matt Damon‘s Odysseus.
While promoting the film, he revealed that it’s a whole other role — one in which he’s never even shown his face — that has been the most financially lucrative for him.
‘Ice Age’ Is Huge
That role is Sid the sloth in the “Ice Age” films, with his fast-talking character driving the action.
While “The Odyssey” has been no slouch at the box office (the film has currently brought in more than $680 million), that’s peanuts compared to “Ice Age” and its sequels.
All told, the films have raked in more than $3.2 billion — for which the actor is very grateful.
As he explained in a recent interview with “Entertainment Tonight,” his two-plus decades in the franchise have been very good for his bank balance.
A Long and Fruitful Story
“‘Ice Age’ allowed me to be as funny as I want to be,” Leguizamo said of the character he’s been voicing in the animated films since the first one in 2002.
“I got to be hilarious and so silly and create this incredible character and creature,” he added
“It paid my bills, so I could be a theater actor,” Leguizamo said.
“Now we got the sixth coming up,” he shared. “The longest-running animated movie franchise in the history of animated movies. It paid my bills. It got me a second and a triple home. It paid for my kids’ college.”
‘Boiling Point’ Is Next
As Leguizamo noted, a sixth “Ice Age” feature is indeed in the works.
Titled “Ice Age: Boiling Point,” the upcoming sequel is described as a “dinosaur-and-lava-filled madcap adventure that takes Manny, Sid, Diego, Ellie, Scrat and the rest of the herd to visit never-before-seen corners of the treacherous Lost World.”
“Boiling Point” is scheduled to hit theaters on February 5, 2027.
It Took 50 Voices to Get It Right
When interviewed by Fandango, Leguizamo revealed that he came up with Sid’s voice by watching Discovery channel documentaries about sloths holding food inside their mouths.
“I gave the director like 50 voices for the sloth, you know,” Leguizamo recalled.
“I tried like a Southern voice, like a slur, like a sloth, and he said no,” Leguizamo continued.
He then suggested a streetwise, tough-guy voice, which the director also rejected.
“So I said, ‘Send me some Discovery Channel footage of sloths.’ So they gave me footage and I studied it, and I was like, they stored food in their cheek pouches,” he recounted.
“So I walked around with a sandwich, put it in my cheek pouches and went [breaking into Sid’s voice], ‘”Oh my god, this is the voice.'”
Once he zeroed in on Sid, he called up the director to test the new voice out on him. “I said, ‘Guess who this is?’ He says, ‘I have no idea.’ I said, ‘It’s Sid the sloth. Bye!'”
