John Leguizamo's Makeup Misery

Despite his best intentions, John Leguizamo somehow keeps landing roles that require him to spend way too many hours in the makeup chair.

For his latest roles in the ABC miniseries Arabian Nights (part two airs tonight at 9 pm/ET), the actor had to wake up each morning at 4 o'clock and then spend four hours in a chair as the makeup wizards transformed him into a chubby genie. Even worse, he plays a second character in the miniseries that required seven hours in the makeup chair.

For Leguizamo, who went through a grueling makeup process to play a corpulent clown in 1997's Spawn, the routine was all too familiar.

"I had vowed when I did [Spawn] that I would never do anything like it again," he tells TV Guide Online. "I had some sort of short-term amnesia. I got on the [Arabian Nights] set and I realized, 'Oh, my God, what did I just do to myself?' "

The actor has yet to learn his lesson. He's currently in Sydney, Australia, shooting Moulin Rouge, where he's playing diminutive artist Toulouse Lautrec. "I thought I was gonna get away from the prosthetics, but to make me short they came and put this Marquis de Sade contraption on," he says. "So I look short but I have little tiny ankles that move.

"It's killing my knees and my back," he adds. "Doing it is tough, but it's great. The things you do for art!"