From SHOW, Thursday, November 5, 1992
By: BARRY KOLTNOW: THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
This Andy Garcia sitting in a dimly lighted editing room on the Paramount lot, examining footage for a television documentary on Cuban music that he's putting together, is not the same Andy Garcia we know from the movies.
The man whose intensity level on the screen has inspired some observers to call him the "New De Niro" or the "New Pacino" or the new whatever is pretty mellow. The dark eyes are soft and warm, not piercing as they are on the big screen. The hair is neatly combed and not falling on his forehead as it seems to do in every film. The body is not tense and wired. In fact, a laid-back Garcia is tapping his feet and smiling at the television screen. He is quite amused watching himself playing conga drums on a stage in Miami with a band comprising some of the greatest Cuban musicians in the world.
"This is as close to what I am as it gets," said Garcia, whose new film, "Jennifer 8," opens Friday.
"That intense guy on the screen is not me," he said. "We all carry a certain amount of anger and rage around inside us, but you can't run around leading your life like that. You can only live like that on a fantasy level. An actor learns to tap into that rage when he needs it."
Garcia, 36, was born in Cuba and raised in Miami from age 5. Although he played a wide range of characters on stage, he has made his mark in films playing intense, and mostly ethnic, characters, from the Hispanic coke dealer in "8 Million Ways to Die" to an Italian in "The Godfather Part III." He played a Cuban cop in "The Mean Season," a Hispanic poet in "American Roulette" and another Italian in "The Untouchables."
But as a measure of his recently attained status as a genuine American movie star, he plays characters with no obvious ethnic ties in his latest films.
In "Hero," in theaters for a month, he portrays an all-American hero who is not really the hero he seems to be. He wanted the part that Dustin Hoffman played in the movie, that of the dirtbag-turned-hero, but producers thought Garcia was more believable as the good guy.
In "Jennifer 8," he plays a tough, big-city police detective who moves to a small Northern California town and finds himself caught in the investigation of a serial killer. Along the way, he falls for a blind witness (played by Uma Thurman) being stalked by the killer, battles with his fellow detectives and goes head to head with a tough FBI interrogator (John Malkovich).
Did we mention that he is real intense in this movie?
"The first time I saw the script, my reaction was, `Oh, no, not another cop movie,' " Garcia said, referring to similar roles he played in "Black Rain" and "Internal Affairs."
"Then I read the script a second time and thought that this was just too good to pass up. The character's got problems, and he's got demons. He's got a lot of obstacles to overcome. These are all the elements that make for a good protagonist. How could I not play this character?"
The script also had great supporting roles - the kind of roles Garcia used to play and steal scenes with - and he had to learn to be the gracious star-host.
This is the first major studio film in which Garcia has been called upon to carry the picture, and there are certain responsibilities that accompany such status.
"I'm very happy to have gotten to this level because protagonists tend to have better arcs than other characters," he said. "But some of the best parts in movies are the supporting roles.
"Supporting roles, by their very design, are intended to steal movies, the way Malkovich stole this movie from me," he said, laughing. "Their responsibility in a movie is to come in and provide a dynamic flair for the protagonist.
"And your job, as the protagonist, is to be a good host and let them overwhelm you in a scene. If they do, you have an obstacle to overcome, and that makes for good drama."
Garcia's family arrived from Cuba in 1961 on one of the so-called Freedom Flights that touched down in Miami during the first few years of the Cuban revolution.
The actor, born Andres Arturo Garci-Menendez, said his attorney father moved the family because he wanted his children to grow up free.
"It was a well-thought-out decision, not a grab-your-belongings-in-the-middle-of-the-night-and-take-off decision," he said.
"But I remember feeling some fear when we were leaving as the soldiers were taking the jewelry off our bodies. I remember they couldn't get the gold bracelets off my sister's hand, and I thought they were going to cut off her arm. That desperation for such little gold seemed so serious to me."
Once in Miami and stripped of their possessions, the family lived in a motel efficiency apartment near the beach. The youngster said he adjusted quickly to his new surroundings and excelled in high school, where he was the starting point guard on the basketball team.
At Florida International University, Garcia discovered acting and dreams of a professional basketball career evaporated in the footlights.
He appeared in college and regional theater productions and made the move to Los Angeles in the late 1970s.
An actor with a Spanish surname and a slight Cuban accent is not exactly high on the lists of Hollywood power brokers, and Garcia had a tough time getting noticed. Ask him how many agents asked him to change his name when he moved to Los Angeles and he smiles.
"All of them asked me to change my name," he said. "But not just the guys who were interested in me. It amazed me how many people who didn't even want to represent me thought they'd throw in that bit of advice.
"It's funny, but all those people who gave me that advice early on . . . I don't see any of them around anymore."
He started landing small parts on television - he was in the premiere episode of "Hill Street Blues" - and finally, in 1983, he made it to the big screen in "Blue Skies Again." Three years later, he lighted up the screen in "8 Million Ways to Die" opposite Jeff Bridges.
Because Hollywood likes to go with a proven formula, Garcia said he was offered dozens of Hispanic cocaine-dealer roles, but he resisted the temptation of fast money and waited for the right parts. A year later, he got "The Untouchables."
That approach of waiting for the right roles instead of the next roles has worked well for him. Now that he's hot, with two films out at once, he said he doesn't plan to change his approach.
"My agent keeps calling to tell me to do something right away, but he doesn't understand that I am doing something," he said. "I'm working on this documentary, and I'm still working on `The Lost City' (a pet project he plans to direct and star in about pre-revolutionary Cuba).
"I'm not going to rush into any movie that doesn't feel right. I have to like the role. The work is always more important than being hot."
Filmography: "Blue Skies Again" (1983) "The Mean Season" (1985) "8 Million Ways to Die" (1986) "The Untouchables" (1987) "American Roulette" (1988) "Stand and Deliver" (1988) "Black Rain" (1989) "The Godfather Part III" (1990) "Internal Affairs" (1990) "A Show of Force" (1990) "Dead Again" (1991) "Hero" (1992)"Jennifer 8" (1992)