From left: John Leguizamo, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck.Credit : 

Stephane Cardinale – Corbis/Corbis via Getty; Marc Piasecki/WireImage; Michael Loccisano/Getty

John Leguizamo ended up impacting Matt Damon and Ben Affleck in a way he didn’t expect.

In a July 29 interview with The New York Times, Leguizamo, who stars in The Odyssey with Damon, was asked about his willingness to speak out about the lack of opportunities for Latino actors in Hollywood.

“I was a very idealistic young man, I believed in meritocracy, no matter that I came from an underprivileged background,” the 66-year-old actor said. “But when I was in N.Y.U., I was the only Latin person in my classes, which was shocking to me in a city where we’re equal to whites in population.” He remembered other actors, like D. B. Sweeney and Andrew McCarthy, would have five auditions a day, while he would have “one every five months for a drug dealer or murderer.”

He continued, “I started to realize that no matter what I did, no matter how talented I was, I was never going to have the same opportunities as them.” Leguizamo said that though he now knows he was dealing with “systemic racism,” he started to internalize it and wonder if he wasn’t good enough. “Now that I’m 66, I know it’s not me — it’s the system,” he said.

The Times asked Leguizamo if any young artists have told him that he helped them. He named Lin-Manuel Miranda, Kris Diaz, who wrote the book for the Hell’s Kitchen musical and actor Jorge Lendeborg, who’s starred in the MCU and Love, Simon.

Leguizamo also inspired two people he didn’t expect. He explained, “But even Matt Damon came to me and said when him and Ben Affleck saw my one-man shows, they realized, ‘Oh my God, if this kid can do it, we can write our own story,’ and they wrote Good Will Hunting. That’s incredible to me because when I told my stories, I just wanted to inspire kids who felt like me, who looked like me.”

During the early ‘90s, Leguizamo, who had a handful of roles in Miami Vice, Casualties of War and Die Hard 2, began performing in one-man shows. His solo show Mambo Mouth: A Savage Comedy, opened in late 1990; The New York Times wrote in their review of the Off-Broadway show that Leguizamo was a “promising writer” and, as a performer, was “a master of body language and vocal inflection.”

In 1993, he starred in the solo show Spic-O-Rama in Chicago and New York. Then, in 1998, he made his Broadway debut in Freak, another one-man show that earned him Tony nominations for best play and best actor in a play. The show was also filmed for HBO, directed by Spike Lee. The shows earned an Emmy nomination for outstanding variety, music or comedy special, and Leguizamo won the Emmy for outstanding individual performance in a variety or music program. He was the first Latin person to win that award.

Outside of the theater, Leguizamo’s career also began to take off. In 1993, he starred in Super Mario Bros. as Luigi. In 1996, he starred as Tybalt Capulet in Romeo + Juliet, and in 1995 he starred in To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar as Chi-Chi Rodriguez, which earned him a Golden Globe nomination. Other roles for the actor have included Moulin Rouge!, the Ice Age animated film series, ER and Encanto.

Affleck, 53, and Damon, 55, wrote and starred in their 1997 film Good Will Hunting, which ultimately won them an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor (for Robin Williams).

Now, in The Odyssey, Damon plays Odysseus, the king of Ithaca who makes a long journey home. Leguizamo plays Eumaeus, a blind servant in the Ithacan palace who was a friend of Odysseus who helps raise his son Telemachus (Tom Holland).

Leguizamo, who starred with Damon, 55, in the 2000 animated film Titan A.E., told PEOPLE earlier this month that he “couldn’t believe what a generous, humble and funny dude” Damon was on the set of The Odyssey.

“I had no idea what to expect, but I didn’t expect his incredible generosity. He never complained, and he was doing the heaviest lifting of any actor in the whole movie. And the dude never had an unkind word, was always kind to the crew. Just a lovely, lovely dude. Chef’s kiss of an actor,” he said, kissing the tips of his fingers.

The Odyssey is in theaters now.