By Kirk Honeycutt
From Cameos Column of Premiere Magazine, September 1989
Producer Sherry Lansing insists that black Rain will make him "a major, major star." But don't try to lure Andy Garcia into any loose talk about stardom. Gracious and rather shy, the 32-year-old actor chooses his words with care so as to underplay his accomplishments. "I've survived," says the Cuban-born actor in his soft Havana accent, "so far."
Lately he's done better than that. After a decade of character work, Garcia has landed two plums: in the Jaffe-Lansing production Black Rain, he plays an idealistic young New York City cop escorting a Japanese criminal back to Osaka with the aid of his partner (Michael Douglas), an embittered New York Police Department veteran who has lost faith in the system. The mismatched duo become embroiled in the Yakuza underworld when their prisoner escapes. In Internal Affairs, Garcia lays another man with a badge, this time a Latino policeman newly promoted to the Internal Affairs division of the Los Angeles County Police, in a role written with the actor in mind. A probe into police misconduct leads Garcia's Raymond Avila into an investigation of a charismatic beat cop, played by Richard Gere.
With characteristic modesty, Garcia describes his roles in terms of their function in the larger story. Of Black Rain he says: "The movie is about Michael's character. My character functions as a dramatic ploy. He's Michael's support system." Of the Italian marksman under Eliott Ness in The Untouchables: "He's set up as a sharpshooter, so you pay him off as a sharpshooter. The few lines he had along the way I ended up cutting. He's a man of action, not words." Garcia might well have been describing himself. He will say how pleased he is that Internal Affairs allows him to play a Latin protagonist. "Hollywood doesn't tend to lead in those directions,' he says.
Garcia's roots aren't ones that often lead to Hollywood, either. The actor arrived in Miami Beach with his family in 1961 at the age of five, after fleeing Castro's Cuba with little more than "our human rights," he says. The family eventually built a multimillion-dollar import-wholesale fragrance concern, which Garcia's brother, Rene, now runs. Despite the family's business orientation, Garcia decided to study theater at Florida International University. "I don't think anyone makes a rational decision to make a career as an actor," he says. "It was a kind of virus. Over the years it was slowly breeding. If your defenses are low, it nails you."
Garcia performed in Florida regional theaters without earning a dime. In 1978 he made the pilgrimage to Los Angeles, where he found work as a waiter and mover while performing with an improvisational group. Bit parts on TV and in film came sporadically.
Early on, Garcia turned down work if he didn't believe in the material. "There's a danger in young actors' being in total submission to the industry, in accepting the audition process as a do-or-die situation, where it can affect your emotional state," he says. "The only way to survive the process is by concentrating on your craft, on your passion for the work."
Garcia finally landed a significant part as a Miami homicide detective in The Mean Season. His first major role came in Hal Ashby's Eight Million Ways To Die, in which he played the suave cocaine kingpin. That film prompted Brian De Palma to offer him the Mafia-hit-man role in The Untouchables. Garcia read the script and liked it, but he made De Palma a proposition. Having just played a supervillian, and suffering from "the bad-guy blues," Garcia asked if he might play the sharpshooter instead. The director agreed.
Garcia has now played so many cops, he could teach a police-academy course. Is he getting typecast? "I certainly hope so," he says. "I spent seven years without working, so if they're making cop movies, I'll play cops. I got two kids to bring up."