An accomplished author, Figueroa has also been active in theater, earning awards for his bilingual performance in "La Chunga" (1995), and in writing, producing and directing corporate films in both Spanish and English. But it was his searing portrait of ambition and hair-trigger anger in "Star Maps" that finally made filmgoers take note of the actor, making the manipulative and brutal patriarch of an Hispanic family in Southern California who forces his youngest son into a life of prostitution a full-blooded character.