Erick Chavarria first read Shakespeare when he knew very little English, but he was immediately struck by the Bard”s poetry.
“‘The beast with two backs” – all these rich phrases really resonated with me,” Chavarria said.
The Guatemala-born actor, who played Danny McBride”s step-brother on Eastbound & Down and more recently appeared in The Duff and Get Hard, read Shakespeare”s plays in Spanish during middle school, and then he encountered the Bard again as a high schooler after he”d moved to Maryland.
It was in college, playing one of the Watchmen in Much Ado About Nothing, that he discovered his comedic acting ability. “We got a lot of laughs. And I really enjoyed that. I would get people on campus like saying, ‘Hey, you're the guy from the play,”” Chavarria recalled. “After that, I was getting cast in mostly comedies, and that”s still the case.”
For HitFix”s video series celebrating 400 years of Shakespeare (last Saturday marked 400 years since Shakespeare”s death), Chavarria read aloud Jaques” Seven Ages of Man monologue from As You Like It.
Watch Chavarria”s reading in the video below:
For more of HitFix”s celebration of 400 years of Shakespeare, check out the video below and watch more readings videos – including with Liev Schreiber, Lynn Collins, and Henry Czerny – here.