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.
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 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.
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.
