Entertainment
Jesse Garcia and his epic, winding hero's journey to Hollywood
Beneath the fluorescent lighting of his hotel room in Pylos, Greece, Jesse Garcia combs through his greasy strands of hair after a daylong shoot for “The Odyssey” — Christopher Nolan’s upcoming movie adaptation of the Greek epic.
“I got set hair,” says Garcia on our video call, somewhat apologetically. Despite a demanding schedule, he has relished his time shooting in Morocco and Greece, along with Hollywood A-listers like Matt Damon and Zendaya. As he looks back on his trajectory, Garcia’s own hero’s journey through Hollywood seems to mirror that of the Greek character Odysseus: a man faced with great challenges that at times feel insurmountable yet formative.
“It’s like nothing else I’ve done before,” says Garcia of the big-budget film, which is set for release in 2026.
The actor, 42, has just wrapped up a different kind of odyssey — he also stars in a new Latino road trip comedy on Disney+, “Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Road Trip.” Released on March 28, the family film sees Garcia as the loving patriarch of the fictional Garcia family, played by an all-star cast made up of Eva Longoria, Paulina Chávez, Thom Nemer, Rose Portillo and Cheech Marin.
“Road Trip” follows the 2014 film “Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day,” which was based on Judith Viorst’s 1972 children’s book. Garcia appeared in the first movie as an animal wrangler; in the new film, he plays a chef. “Maybe I was an animal wrangler so I could put myself through chef school,” he says.
Directed by Marvin Lemus, the new flick depicts a topsy-turvy experience that Garcia is familiar with. “My parents used to take us to [Durango] to see my dad’s family every year,” says Garcia. “So we [did] that road trip a lot when we were little kids.”
Unlike many of his colleagues in Hollywood, who came from affluent families and studied in prestigious schools, Garcia was born into a Mexican American family in Rawlins, Wyo., a small mining town with few resources for aspiring actors. “I auditioned for a play in high school,” says Garcia. “Of course I didn’t get it, because I didn’t know what I was doing!”
Garcia, an athlete, would devote himself to cheer routines and stunts in high school — he was later awarded a cheerleading scholarship to the University of Nebraska, where he studied exercise science. This skill set later helped him choreograph a scene in the 2007 sports parody “The Comebacks,” which featured former NFL tight-end Tony Gonzalez.
“If I’d known better back in the day, I would’ve done cool classes [in college],” Garcia says with a chuckle.
At the behest of a friend, he moved to Atlanta to find his direction. This led him to take acting classes at WHAT Films, an innovative theater class where he learned to write, direct, act and produce original materials under actor-director Judson Vaughn. “It was a very unique format — that was the foundation of how I work,” says Garcia.
In 2003, with only $2,000 in his pocket and a roommate he found on Craigslist, Garcia made L.A. his home. The city’s strong Chicano presence overwhelmed him at first, but he eased into the community. “I didn’t grow up with a strong Latino community in Wyoming,” he explains. “When I got to L.A., I worked in this movie called ‘Walkout’ with Edward James Olmos [and] started learning about the history of Latinos in L.A.”
Garcia landed his breakout role in the 2006 film “Quinceañera,” a coming-of-age film directed by Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland. In it, Garcia played Carlos, a gay teen estranged from his Mexican family, along with his pregnant cousin and protagonist Magdalena (played by Emily Rios). The film gained traction at the Sundance Film Festival, where it won both the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award. The film was later acquired and distributed by Sony Pictures.
“I [think] I got like a thousand dollars to do that movie,” says Garcia of his indie flick, which was a nonunion production. “[But] it started my career.”
(Carlin Stiehl / For The Times)
Garcia followed this momentum with small roles in procedurals like “CSI: Miami,” “Law & Order: Criminal Intent” and “ER.” Although he asked his agents to opt out of stereotypical Latino roles, usually limited to gardeners and gangsters, he relented for a role in the movie “Days of Wrath,” an “action gangster flick,” as he puts it. Directed by Celia Fox, it featured a stellar roster of Black and Latino actors: Laurence Fishburne, Lupe Ontiveros, Taye Diggs and Wilmer Valderrama.
But the film, which was slated for release in 2008, would never see the light of day — though he’s still looking to get the rights to it. “Celia, call me,” he says to the camera.
“I was just a broke actor, then 2008 happened,” says Garcia, whose happy-go-lucky demeanor instantly seems to wash away.
In the aftermath of the 2007-08 writers’ strike, roles for the blooming actor became harder to come by — a situation that was made more dire by the nation’s crushing financial crisis. Nearly 20 years later, creatives continue to fight for their artistry amid growing concerns about AI and streaming revenue, all while production has slowed down in L.A.
Jesse Garcia in “Flamin’ Hot,” his first lead role in a major studio film.
(Emily Aragones / Searchlight Pictures )
His first lead role in a major studio film would not come until 2023, when he was cast as Richard Montañez in “Flamin’ Hot,” the story of a janitor turned self-proclaimed “godfather of Latino marketing,” who claimed to have invented the finger-licking snack Flamin’ Hot Cheetos.
“When I first got the audition for ‘Flamin’ Hot,’ I read it and went, ‘This is mine. … They wrote this for me,’” says Garcia. “I just have to jump through hoops and prove that it’s mine.”
First-time director and friend Eva Longoria tells De Los that Garcia, whom she considers her “cosmic soulmate,” was “meant to be Richard Montañez.”
“He didn’t have one day off, so he had this intense approach to it,” says Longoria. “He wanted to do well — not just for me but for our community. … We could not fail on ‘Flamin’ Hot.’”
The pressures of the role weighed on Garcia — not because he carried the Latino community on his shoulders, which is an obligation he vehemently shrugs off, but because he was present for all 36 days of shooting.
“Nobody knew [it], but I could have had a mental breakdown every day,” he says.
“There was one day that [co-star] Annie Gonzalez put her hand on my chest just to say hello and check in with me, and I was like, ‘Oh s—, why am I so emotional right now?’” says Garcia.
Gonzalez, who played Montañez’s wife Judy in “Flamin’ Hot,” remembers this moment during filming. “Jesse does mask a lot of things with play,” she says. “I put my hand on his chest and gave him my energy, ’cause I can only imagine carrying this film.”
Although the veracity of this marketing success story was contested in a 2021 L.A. Times investigation, which the real-life Montañez cites in his 2024 defamation suit against the popular chip company, Garcia says he resonates with his character’s go-getter spirit. (And, for the record, he also stands behind Montañez’s account of events: “I believe him, he has receipts.”)
“I [too] have felt like the underdog,” says Garcia. “I’ve felt like I’ve wanted to quit.”
He says that when thinking back on those stormy moments in 2008, he asks himself: “Would the 21-year-old version of myself be stoked to meet the current version?”
To that, he says: “Yeah, I would be proud of that guy.”
Movie Reviews
Movie Review – SHAKA: A STORY OF ALOHA
Entertainment
Tommy Lee Jones’ daughter reportedly found dead at San Francisco hotel on New Year’s Day
Victoria Jones, the daughter of Academy Award-winning actor Tommy Lee Jones, was reportedly found dead at a hotel in San Francisco on New Year’s Day. She was 34.
According to TMZ, the San Francisco Fire Department responded to a medical emergency call at the Fairmont San Francisco early Thursday morning. The paramedics pronounced Victoria dead at the scene before turning it over to the San Francisco Police Department for further investigation, the outlet said.
An SFPD representative confirmed to The Times that officers responded to a call at approximately 3:14 a.m. Thursday regarding a report of a deceased person at the hotel and that they met with medics at the scene who declared an unnamed adult female dead.
Citing law enforcement sources, NBC Bay Area also reported that the deceased woman found in a hallway of the hotel was believed to be Jones and that police did not suspect foul play.
“We are deeply saddened by an incident that occurred at the hotel on January 1, 2026,” the Fairmont told NBC Bay Area in a statement. “Our heartfelt condolences are with the family and loved ones during this very difficult time. The hotel team is actively cooperating and supporting police authorities within the framework of the ongoing investigation.”
The medical examiner conducted an investigation at the scene, but Jones’ cause of death remains undetermined. Dispatch audio obtained by TMZ and People indicated that the 911 emergency call was for a suspected drug overdose.
Jones was the daughter of Tommy Lee and ex-wife Kimberlea Cloughley. Her brief acting career included roles on films such as “Men in Black II” (2002), which starred her father, and “The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada” (2005), which was directed by her father. She also appeared in a 2005 episode of “One Tree Hill.”
Page Six reported that Jones had been arrested at least twice in 2025 in Napa County, including an arrest on suspicion of being under the influence of a controlled substance and drug possession.
Movie Reviews
Movie Review: “I Was a Stranger” and You Welcomed Me
Just when you think that you’ve seen and heard all sides of the human migration debate, and long after you fear that the cruel, the ignorant and the scapegoaters have won that shouting match, a film comes along and defies ignorance and prejudice by both embracing and upending the conventional “immigrant” narrative.
“I Was a Strranger” is the first great film of 2026. It’s cleverly written, carefully crafted and beautifully-acted with characters who humanize many facets of the “migration” and “illegal immigration” debate. The debut feature of writer-director Brandt Andersen, “Stranger” is emotional and logical, blunt and heroic. It challenges viewers to rethink their preconceptions and prejudices and the very definition of “heroic.”
The fact that this film — which takes its title from the Book of Matthew, chapter 25, verse 35 — is from the same faith-based film distributor that made millions by feeding the discredited human trafficking wish fulfillment fantasy “Sound of Freedom” to an eager conservative Christian audience makes this film something of a minor miracle in its own right.
But as Angel Studios has also urged churchgoers not just to animated Nativity stories (“The King of Kings”) and “David” musicals, but Christian resistence to fascism (“Truth & Treason” and “Bonheoffer”) , their atonement is almost complete.
Andersen deftly weaves five compact but saga-sized stories about immigrants escaping from civil-war-torn Syria into a sort of interwoven, overlapping “Babel” or “Crash” about migration.
“The Doctor” is about a Chicago hospital employee (Yasmine Al Massri of “Palestine 36” and TV’s “Quantico”) whose flashback takes us to the hospital in Aleppo, Syria, bombed and terrorized by the Assad regime’s forces, and what she and her tween daughter (Massa Daoud) went through to escape — from literally crawling out of a bombed building to dodging death at the border to the harrowing small boat voyage from Turkey to Greece.
“The Soldier” follows loyal Assad trooper Mustafa (Yahya Mahayni was John the Baptist in Martin Scorsese Presents: The Saints”) through his murderous work in Aleppo, and the crisis of conscience that finally hits him as he sees the cruel and repressive regime he works for at its most desperate.
“The Smuggler” is Marwan, a refugee-camp savvy African — played by the terrific French actor Omar Sy of “The Intouchables” and “The Book of Clarence” — who cynically makes his money buying disposable inflatable boats, disposable outboards and not-enough-life-jackets in Turkey to smuggle refugees to Greece.
“The Poet” (Ziad Bakri of “Screwdriver”) just wants to get his Syrian family of five out of Turkey and into Europe on Marwan’s boat.
And “The Captain” (Constantine Markoulakis of “The Telemachy”) commands a Hellenic Coast Guard vessel, a man haunted by the harrowing rescues he must carry out daily and visions of the bodies of those he doesn’t.
Andersen, a Tampa native who made his mark producing Tom Cruise spectacles (“American Made”), Mel Gibson B-movies (“Panama”) and the occasional “Everest” blockbuster, expands his short film “Refugee” to feature length for “I Was a Stranger.” He doesn’t so much alter the formula or reinvent this genre of film as find points of view that we seldom see that force us to reconsider what we believe through their eyes.
Sy’s Smuggler has a sickly little boy that he longs to take to Chicago. He runs his ill-gotten-gains operation, profiting off human misery, to realize that dream. We see glimpses of what might be compassion, but also bullying “customers” and his new North African assistant (Ayman Samman). Keeping up the hard front he shows one and all, we see him callously buy life jackets in the bazaar — never enough for every customer to have one in any given voyage.
The Captain sits for dinner with family and friends and has to listen to Greek prejudices and complaints about this human life and human rights crisis, which is how the worlds sees Greece reacting to this “invasion.” But as he and his first mate recount lives saved and the horrors of lives lost, that quibbling is silenced.
Here and there we see and hear (in Arabic and Greek with subtitles, and English) little moments of “rising above” human pettiness and cruelty and the simple blessings of kindness.
“I Was a Stranger” was finished in 2024 and arrives in cinemas at one of the bleakest moments in recent history. Cruelty is running amok, unchecked and unpunished. Countries are being destabilized, with the fans of alleged “strong man” rule cheering it on.
Andersen carefully avoids politics — Middle Eastern, Israeli, European and American — save for the opening scene’s zoom in on that Chicago hospital, passing a gaudily named “Trump” hotel in the process, and a general condemnation of Syria’s Assad mob family regime.
But Andersen’s bold movie, with its message so against the grain of current events, compromised media coverage and the mostly conservative audience that has become this film distributor’s base, plays like a wet slap back to reality.
And as any revival preacher will tell you, putting a positive message out there in front of millions is the only way to convert hundreds among the millions who have lost their way.

Rating: PG-13, violence, smoking, racial slurs
Cast: Yasmine Al Massri, Yahya Mahayni, Ziad Bakri, Omar Sy, Ayman Samman, Massa Daoud, Jason Beghe and Constantine Markoulakis
Credits: Scripted and directed by Brandt Andersen. An Angel Studios release.
Running time: 1:43
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