A boyhood held dear

I was born on the east side of Los Angeles, and it was quite different than most people’s upbringing. It was all cement. My great-grandfather used to walk me to preschool, and he would look at a stop sign and say, “See that? It says, ‘Stop.’ When you see that, I want you to stop and look around for a tree, look for birds, look for nature.” From that moment on, whenever I saw a stop sign, I heard my great-grandfather’s voice.

Baseball’s life lessons

I played baseball for quite a few years. It taught me discipline, determination, perseverance and patience, the key ingredients to my life. By the age of 14, I had won the state batting championship in California for two years in a row.

One class

At 14, I quit baseball, got into a rock band and started singing. I finished high school and put myself through East L.A. Community College, where I took a theater class­—drama, comedy, improv­. And that got me to where I am today.

The big break

In 1978, I took a role as a Mexican American that required me to sing and dance and do comedy and drama. El Pachuco was a one-of-a-kind character, and Luis Valdez wrote a beautiful script that re-created a true story from 1943. After Zoot Suit, I never had to audition again.

The battles and the gifts

Discrimination, prejudice I felt right from the beginning. If the character was stereotypical, I wouldn’t do it. I am the first and only [U.S.-born] Mexican American lead actor who’s ever been nominated for an Academy Award in the history of film [for playing Jaime Escalante in Stand and Deliver].

When fiction becomes reality

Battlestar Galactica and Blade Runner were good stories about what the AI world would be like. And now we are seeing that come to pass.

Listening to his grandkids

I spoil them. I’m permissive. And I talk to them directly. I just ask a question and listen to them. When you listen to people, things change. When you talk at people, it becomes something else.

Sounding the alarm on diabetes

I am working on bringing diabetes awareness to the forefront because of the amount of diabetic disease that is in my culture. Every male in my family has died of diabetes. The key is diet and exercise.

This age is a blessing

When you’re my age, you can do what you want to do and you really know who you are. People say to me, “What do you most want out of life?” and I always say I want to be able to live to at least 120, because I want to take care of my great-grandchildren like my great-grandfather took care of me. If I can do that, then I’ve won the game. —As told to Lisa Rosen

Actor, director and producer Edward James Olmos, 79, will play Jennifer Lopez’s father in Netflix’s rom-com Office Romance, due out this year.

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For an exclusive video of Olmos, see aarp.org/olmos.