TUCSON, Ariz. (KGUN) — Here’s a story for movie fans and people who like inspirational stories of any sort. An actor who has played an amazing number of movie and TV roles talked with students at Desert View High School Friday. This actor’s real life story offers direction on how to reach your goals.
At school, students can learn lessons that go far beyond books. Friday at Desert View High School, they learned some lessons in acting, and in life.”
Even if you don’t recognize him, there’s a good chance you’ve seen Pepe Serna. He says he’s been in a hundred movies and three hundred tv shows—starting when it was even harder than now for hispanics to get good roles.
He says, “I was killing someone or I was getting killed. That’s the way they see us. It’s changing now.”
He’s the victim in what some people call the most famous movie murder. It’s in Scarface. It involved a chain saw. We’ll leave it at that.
Serna’s in Tucson for the Arizona International Film Festival. Life is Art, a film on his life and workplays at the Mercado Annex 6pm Saturday night.
He gave students at Desert View a quick master class on how to build emotion into their acting. But offered larger lessons that reach past race, gender, stage and screen to real life.
He says, “There's nothing that's stopping our brain from doing whatever it wants. That's why I say that six inches of real estate that we have between our ears is the most important piece of real estate there is.”
Damian Noriega says he’s more interested in being a videographer than an actor. But he was one of the students learning a sample of the skills Pepe Serna polished in more than fifty years in Hollywood.
“It was a surreal experience. You know, I I'm very I was very nervous when I came up, you know, and it's one of my it was actually one of my dreams to actually meet one of my favorite actors and actually see him come to Desert View and actually talk to him. It's such a great experience.”
KGUN reporter Craig Smith asked: “Did he interest you in acting or are you still more interested in technical?"
Noriega: “You know what he gave me? Like he said, I can do both.”
Serna says he got better roles when he began to write them for himself and showed Hollywood he could surpass the stereotypes.
His advice helped these Desert View students start their own scripts for the lives ahead of them.
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