Lou Diamond Phillips

Lou Diamond Phillips (né Upchurch; born February 17, 1962) is an American actor and director. His breakthrough came when he starred as Ritchie Valens in the biographical drama film La Bamba (1987). For the Academy Award–nominated Stand and Deliver (1988), Phillips was nominated for a Golden Globe Award and won an Independent Spirit Award. He made his Broadway debut with the 1996 revival of The King and I, earning a Tony Award nomination for his portrayal of King Mongkut of Siam. Phillips' other notable films include Young Guns (1988), Young Guns II (1990), Courage Under Fire (1996), The Big Hit (1998), Che (2008), and The 33 (2015). 2Early life Phillips was born at the Subic Bay Naval Station in the Philippines, the son of Lucita Umayam Arañas and Gerald Amon Upchurch, a Marine C-130 crew chief. His father was an American of Scottish-Irish and one-quarter Cherokee descent, and his mother, a native of Candelaria, Zambales, is Filipina, with distant Chinese, Japanese, Hawaiian, and Spanish ancestry. Phillips was named after Marine legend Leland "Lou" Diamond. After his father died, he took his stepfather's surname "Phillips" as his own. He was raised in Texas, where he attended Flour Bluff High School in Corpus Christi, graduating in 198