John Leguizamo has explained why he turned down Vince Vaughn’s role in Mr. & Mrs. Smith.

The 2005 action comedy starred Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt as married assassins who are assigned to kill each other.

In an interview with Business Insider, Leguizamo revealed he turned down the opportunity to play the supporting character Eddie, Pitt’s on-screen best friend and co-worker, for financial reasons.

“Well, for Mr. & Mrs. Smith, it was because they were paying them $20 million and they were going to pay me scale (the minimum set by the unions). I felt dissed, and they probably weren’t dissing me, but I felt dissed,” he said.

“Sometimes when you’re a person of colour, you’re so used to being dissed that you think you’re being dissed, and sometimes you’re not being dissed. So that’s what happens, and you have to go to a lot of therapy to fix that.”

During the interview, Leguizamo also revealed he turned down Stanley Tucci’s role in The Devil Wears Prada and Robin Williams’ voice roles in the 2006 animated musical Happy Feet.

He explained he wasn’t interested in the penguin movie because he was already known for voicing Sid the Sloth in the Ice Age animated franchise.

“I had done Ice Age. I was going, ‘I don’t want to be doing all these ice movies.’ Such a stupid reason. But it seemed logical to me at the moment, and then I lost out on millions,” he shared.

Leguizamo has been the voice of Sid the Sloth since 2002. The last film, Ice Age: Collision Course, was released in 2016.

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