ANDY GARCIA IS ready for his audience to laugh a little.
After receiving an Oscar nomination as the heir apparent to the Corleone empire in ``The Godfather, Part III'' and gaining critical raves as the controlling husband of alcoholic Meg Ryan in ``When a Man Loves a Woman,'' he was looking for a comedy.
He found his laughs in the sweeping, offbeat comic fable ``Steal Big, Steal Little,'' directed by Andy Davis, who is more noted for action fare (``The Fugitive,'' ``Under Siege'').
``It's not at all what people would expect,'' the Cuban-born actor said as he settled for a talk at the Regency Hotel in New York. ``From this director, they expect an action film, I suppose. We have a chase and we have a balloon caper, but it's a little light-hearted.
``And from me? Well, I'm not sure what they expect from me. Something more serious, more intense, I would guess. I'm told that I shouldn't keep audiences guessing. That, if I want to be a megastar, whatever that is, I must do big action films. I don't care about that. I work often enough. I'd rather do something interesting -- like this.''
He's also resisted being typecast as the Latin Lover. ``I would be glad to play Latin parts for the rest of my life, if they were well-written, but they aren't,'' Garcia said. ``I don't feel I should limit myself to playing just one ethnic type, although I'm certainly proud of my own Latin heritage.''
Garcia has turned down several roles because they had nudity, or near-nudity. ``It isn't necessary,'' he said. ``I believe our goal, as filmmakers, is to encourage the audience to use their imaginations.''
Davis said ``the women drop dead over Andy anyway. I think what they see in him is a seriousness -- and something of a gentleman. He's brooding, but he's not neurotic.''
Garcia's fans get twice the thrill this time around. In the new movie, he plays identical twins, Ruben and Robby. One is bad, one is good, and both are battling over a giant estate near Santa Barbara, Calif.
While Ruben is a good-hearted, simple man of the people, his brother Robby is a schemer who wants to use the land for reckless development.
``Steal Big'' is very loosely based on a West Virginia family in which two twin brothers competed over mineral rights.
Its creators say it is a throwback to the screwball comedies of the 1930s or the Frank Capra comedies of the 1940s, when the little guys always won over overwhelming evil forces. But when it was unveiled at the Toronto International Film Festival two weeks ago, audiences were as much baffled as amused.
``I filmed the parade scene almost a year before the movie itself went before the cameras,'' Garcia said. ``We had that one scene, and nothing else for almost a year, but I knew that Andy Davis wanted it made, and he knew that I was committed. Eventually, he got the money.''
As for the ``twinning,'' Garcia admits it was a bit more than he planned.
``There are scenes in which one brother talks to the other. I was saying lines to myself. There were days when the filming was so quick that I had to change characters on the set, in front of the crew -- my attitude, my look, everything. There was no time to go to the dressing room. There are scenes in which both of us are in the same scene. I'd film one, then the other. The most complex scene is one involving dozens of mirrors. Both brothers are seen in the mirrors, in the same scene.''
Garcia, 39, was brought by his family from Cuba to Miami at age 5.
``I am not an immigrant,'' he emphasized. ``I am an exile. My father was the mayor of a small town in Cuba, was a lawyer and managed 1,000 acres. He developed his own kind of avocado. He gave it all up because of his hatred for the Castro regime. When he got to Miami, he had 10 cents in his pocket to call his brother in Tampa. It wasn't enough.
``We lived in a one-bedroom apartment. The three children slept in the living room. My father worked 12-hour days, six days a week at a hosiery factory. But I remember no bitterness. I remember no real struggle. I was a child.''
He has been married to the same woman for 15 years and they have three daughters, ages 11, 7 and 3. They live in Los Angeles, but he often flies back to Miami to be a part of fund-raisers and other events for the Cuban community. His eldest child plays his daughter in ``Steal Big, Steal Little.''
When he went to Los Angeles, his first job was as a waiter at the 1978 Golden Globe Awards. He served Jon Voight, who won the best actor award for ``Coming Home.'' ``Only a salad separated where he was at and where I was,'' Garcia said.
Eventually he got a few TV commercials and then a three-show role on ``Hill Street Blues.'' ``I got scale, $300 a week, and it was great money at that time. I had a family to support.''
Since then, he's starred in ``Hero,'' as the homeless man who changes places with Dustin Hoffman; in ``The Untouchables,'' with his boyhood hero Sean Connery (``I always thought he was the coolest man in the world, and I guess I still do.''); as Michael Douglas' police partner in ``Black Rain''; as a jealous but honest cop jeered by Richard Gere in ``Internal Affairs''; and a few dozen others.
Ready for release is his role as a mobster who messes up a heist in ``Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead,'' the first feature film directed by Norfolk's own Gary Fleder. Later this month, he starts filming ``Night Falls on Manhattan,'' directed by Sidney Lumet. Then, he'll play Spanish playwright and poet Federico Garcia Lorca in an independent film.
He has formed his own production company and, after years of planning, will direct and star in his own drama of Cuba in the midst of the 1959 revolution. ``The Lost City,'' he said, is a mixture of ``Casablanca'' and ``The Godfather.'' He'll play a nightclub owner embroiled in the revolution.
Rumors are, though, that he would have coveted the title role in the big-budget remake of ``Zorro,'' which has now gone to Antonio Banderas.
``I don't think of competition as a part of this business,'' he said. ``There are roles for everyone. I am chasing a career, not the title of a movie star.''
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