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But Stand and Deliver is more than a simple parable of effort rewarded. Even more than La Bamba, it has sent a jolt of hope and renewed self-esteem through Hispanic communities across the country. As the news about the film has spread, Olmos and Escalante have become role models for millions of Hispanic Americans, living proof that with the requisite amount of what Escalante calls ganas (desire), they can lift themselves out of the barrio and become teachers, mathematicians, movie stars -- anything they want. Olmos is "very inspirational, a real hero to the Hispanic community," observes Producer Moctesuma Esparza (The Milagro Beanfield War, The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez). "He not only has star quality, but belief and drive."
Olmos' galvanizing portrayal only confirms what his fans have known for a long time: he is not only possibly the best Hispanic-American actor of his generation, but one of the best performers working today. His characters are fueled by a highly controlled intensity. Playing the teacher in Stand and Deliver or Lieut. Castillo in Miami Vice, he holds in his energy, radiating it through a laser-beam stare. He is every minority rebel putting his fireworks on a long fuse. In a few roles -- the strutting El Pachuco in Zoot Suit or the crazed, canine avenger in Wolfen -- Olmos cuts loose and explodes with more than his eyes. Nostrils flare, teeth flash, the body language becomes incendiary.
Like his grandly obsessive contemporaries Robert De Niro and Dustin Hoffman, Olmos is a demon for authenticity. To play Escalante, he altered himself physically, gaining 40 lbs. and enduring a tedious makeup process daily to create a balding pate over his thick hair. The actor also spent hundreds of hours studying Escalante's speech patterns on recorded tapes and observing the teacher's mannerisms and personal habits both during and after school hours. "He even wanted to move in with Jaime," recalls the movie's director, Ramon Menendez, "but Escalante's wife wouldn't allow it."
Olmos pursues his goals with extraordinary concentration. When major studios were reluctant to distribute 1982's The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez, he boldly insisted until they caved in. "The odds were against us," recalls Cortez Director Robert Young. "But Eddie believed we could make it work, and we did." More recently, the actor has been negotiating with several major U.S. corporations to make copies of Stand and Deliver available to every library, school and boy's and girl's club in the country.
Where does Olmos get off thinking he can change the world single-handedly? "I always questioned authority," he says. "I wanted to make sure that the rules in my game were wide open -- new, clean, fresh, redefined every time so I could keep growing. I was always ambitious. I had a sense of - possibility."
The roots of that confidence lie just a few miles from the gates of Garfield High, in the Boyle Heights section of East Los Angeles. "Boyle Heights was the Ellis Island of the West Coast," says Olmos, "and I thought that was what the world was like. On our small lane we had a Hispanic family with 13 kids, Native Americans, Koreans, Chinese, Mexicans, Russians. It was a fantastic environment."