LOS ANGELES >> Beneath the fluorescent lighting of his hotel room in Pylos, Greece, Jesse Garcia combs through his greasy strands of hair after a daylong shoot for “The Odyssey” — Christopher Nolan’s upcoming movie adaptation of the Greek epic.

“I got set hair,” says Garcia on our video call, somewhat apologetically. Despite a demanding schedule, he has relished his time shooting in Morocco and Greece, along with Hollywood A-listers like Matt Damon and Zendaya. As he looks back on his trajectory, Garcia’s own hero’s journey through Hollywood seems to mirror that of the Greek character Odysseus: a man faced with great challenges that at times feel insurmountable yet formative.

“It’s like nothing else I’ve done before,” says Garcia of the big-budget film, which is set for release in 2026.

The actor, 42, has just wrapped up a different kind of odyssey — he also stars in a new Latino road trip comedy on Disney+, “Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Road Trip.” Released March 28, the family film sees Garcia as the loving patriarch of the fictional Garcia family, played by an all-star cast made up of Eva Longoria, Paulina Chávez, Thom Nemer, Rose Portillo and Cheech Marin.

“Road Trip” follows the 2014 film “ Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day,” which was based on Judith Viorst’s 1972 children’s book. Garcia appeared in the first movie as an animal wrangler; in the new film, he plays a chef. “Maybe I was an animal wrangler so I could put myself through chef school,” he says.

Directed by Marvin Lemus, the new flick depicts a topsy-turvy experience that Garcia is familiar with. “My parents used to take us to [Durango] to see my dad’s family

Unlike many of his colleagues in Hollywood, who came from affluent families and studied in prestigious schools, Garcia was born into a Mexican American family in Rawlins, Wyoming, a small mining town with few resources for aspiring actors. “I auditioned for a play in high school,” says Garcia. “Of course I didn’t get it, because I didn’t know what I was doing!”

Garcia, an athlete, would devote himself to cheer routines and stunts in high school — he was later awarded a cheerleading scholarship to the University of Nebraska, where he studied exercise science. This skill-set later helped him choreograph a scene in the 2007 sports parody “The Comebacks,” which featured former NFL tight end Tony Gonzalez.

“If I’d known better back in the day, I would’ve done cool classes [in college],” Garcia says with a chuckle.

At the behest of a friend, he moved to Atlanta to find his direction. This led him to take acting classes at WHAT Films, an innovative theater class where he learned to write, direct, act and produce original materials under actor-director Judson Vaughn. “It was a very unique format — that was the foundation of how I work,” says Garcia.

In 2003, with only $2,000 in his pocket and a roommate he found on Craigslist, Garcia made L.A. his home. The city’s strong Chicano presence overwhelmed him at first, but he eased into the community. “I didn’t grow up with a strong Latino community in Wyoming,” he explains. “When I got to L.A., I worked in this movie called ‘Walkout’ with Edward James Olmos [and] started learning about the history of Latinos in L.A.”

Garcia landed his breakout role in the 2006 film “Quinceañera,” a coming-of-age film directed by Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland. In it, Garcia played Carlos, a gay teen estranged from his Mexican family, along with his pregnant cousin and protagonist Magdalena (played by Emily Rios). The film gained traction at the Sundance Film Festival, where it won both the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award. The film was later acquired and distributed by Sony Pictures.

“I [think] I got like a thousand dollars to do that movie,” says Garcia of his indie flick, which was a nonunion production. “[But] it started my career.”

Garcia followed this momentum with small roles in procedurals like “CSI: Miami,” “Law & Order: Criminal Intent” and “ER.” Although he asked his agents to opt out of stereotypical Latino roles, usually limited to gardeners and gangsters, he relented for a role in the movie “Days of Wrath,” an “action gangster flick,” as he puts it. Directed by Celia Fox, it featured a stellar roster of Black and Latino actors: Laurence Fishburne, Lupe Ontiveros, Taye Diggs and Wilmer Valderrama.

But the film, which was slated for release in 2008, would never see the light of day — though he’s still looking to get the rights to it. “Celia, call me,” he says to the camera.

“I was just a broke actor, then 2008 happened,” says Garcia, whose happy-go-lucky demeanor instantly seems to wash away.

In the aftermath of the 2007-08 writers’ strike, roles for the blooming actor became harder to come by — a situation that was made more dire by the nation’s crushing financial crisis. Nearly 20 years later, creatives continue to fight for their artistry amid growing concerns about AI and streaming revenue, all while production has slowed down in L.A.

His first lead role in a major studio film would not come until 2023, when he was cast as Richard Montañez in “ Flamin’ Hot,” the story of a janitor turned self-proclaimed “godfather of Latino marketing,” who claimed to have invented the finger-licking snack Flamin’ Hot Cheetos.