From GQ, July 1995
He doesn't sleep around, trash hotel rooms or sprawl in guest chairs on talk-show stages -- legs splayed, face lolling toward Leno. He's not the subject of breaking stories in the trades about astronomical multi-picture deals; on the rare occasions when he's boldfaced in a gossip column, it's usually for something especially sexy like his participation in Miami's 1992 hurricane-relief effort. He doesn't serve up deep, dark idiocies to interviewers; doesn't dwell in an egregious monument to himself in Bel Air. In a La-La landfill of careerism and ego, he's remarkably centered.
And that's part of the reason Andy Garcia, at 39, isn't as big a star as he could be.
Which isn't to say he's not big. A natural in muscular pictures featuring grandiose contrasts between good and evil -- The Untouchables, Internal Affairs -- Garcia also ranks as a date-movie darling, thanks to last year's When a Man Loves a Woman. He's among the few actors who can play lovers and loose cannons with equal conviction. "He's so ruled by the emotional truth of things -- it's kind of unbelievable when you're working with him," according to Meg Ryan, who, as Gracia's alcoholic wife in When a Man Loves a Woman, was the object of his trademark lovesick gaze. "There's just no room for you to do anything false, because you see it in his eyes. You just go 'Uh-oh, that wasn't real, he can tell.' I mean, I've never worked with anything the likes of that before."
Onscreen, Garcia has access to a vast reserve of inviolable sentiment -- nowhere more evident than in The Godfather Part III, which paired him, as apprentice don Vincent Mancini, with the unwatchable green Sofia Coppola: Their scenes together play like Romeo and Juliet meets Melrose Place. Only Gracia's fiery sincerity kept the kissing-cousins subplot from looking ludicrous.
But for all his star quality, monster clout eludes Garcia, at least partly because he applies no strategy to his choice of roles. After The Untouchables and his Oscar-nominated turn in The Godfather Part III, he could have made a specialty of flinty marksmen and paragons of virility; instead, he opted for a quirky cameo in Dead Again and a quietly comic turn in Hero -- in addition to his good cop in the troubled Jennifer 8. For years a fixture on the Paramount lot, Garcia suddenly seems drawn to the less-cash, no flash independent approach to moviemaking, simply because it's more creative. This fall he stars in Miramax's Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead, the mordant story of a low-rent band of wise guys, and in Steal Big / Steal Little, in which he plays identical twins. And though the latter is the brainchild of high-octane director Andrew Davis, it doesn't figure to be another Fugitive or Under Siege. For starters, it's a comedy, a pet project of Davis's that's been described by a person close to the production as -- gulp -- "a labor of love." But Davis has no concerns about the movie's commercial prospects. "It's got a lot of the values and hooks that Gump has," he notes.
Huge stardom, Davis says, "has to do with being the center of a movie that makes a fortune, and I think (Steal Big) is going to do that for Andy." Perhaps. But it remains to be seen if that's what Andy wants. Having lived as an exile for nearly his entire life, he's pretty clear on what's important and what isn't; a childhood marked by upheaval and loss has afforded him extraordinary perspective on everything from petty career woes to the inevitability of natural disasters. When talk turns to earthquakes, he's reminded of a conversation a friend of his had with a guy behind the counter at a 7-Eleven, who'd just moved to L.A. from Lebanon. Gracia's friend asked the guy, "Aren't you worried about the earthquakes out here?" To which the guy answered, "Oh no, earthquakes much better than bombardment" -- the moral of the story being, It's all relative. In Andy Garcia's universe, very few things are worth sweating -- among them family, work and the steamy Havana nights that never were.
Garcia was a fast-aging 5-year-old during the Bay of Pig crisis in April of '61. He vividly recalls the presence of tanks and soldiers during his final days in Havana -- there was a military outpost across the street from his house. "I was coming home from day school singing 'The International' -- the Communist national anthem," Garcia says in the lilting cadences and slightly formal phrasing of someone for whom English is not a first language. Perched at the edge of a couch, wearing a gold chain that's tangled in graying chest hairs, he's got the hint of fleshiness and the low center of gravity of an ex-jock -- which is what he is. "I was being influenced by the indoctrination, going with the flow. Why not scream and yell with everybody else in school? What does a 5-year-old kid know about any of that? Then they passed the law about giving up the rights to your children to the state, and that's when my father said 'That's enough.'"
We're sitting in an L.A. hotel suite -- a room so devoid of character and personal details, it felt for a minute like we'd both shown up early for a management-training seminar. His choice. "I'm not interested in self-promotion," Garcia said for openers, the lustrous, black V of his hairline pointing to a mouth that seemed to mean business. But Garcia is so inherently chivalrous, his defenses melted away in spite of him. In no time, the bird-of-prey intensity of his stare -- fixed, obsidian eyes anchored by a sleek wedge of a nose -- softened. And his rather stiff opening monologue on the topographical points of interest beyond our suite's hermetically sealed window gave way to a tour of more personal terrain.
Garcia's family had to start over completely once they'd resettled in a Jewish neighborhood in Miami. His father, Rene, a once-prosperous lawyer and farmer -- "a gentleman farmer, I like to call him" -- suddenly found himself ordering supplies for a catering company. But he was never bitter about the drastic reversal of his fortunes. When Rene died last year after a long illness, Andy was devastated. "I understand he got terribly emotional at the service -- his father was an extraordinary man, and Andy was very much attached to him," says Garcia's friend the novelist Guillermo Cabrera Infante, who remembers Rene as having been very approachable -- much more so than Andy. "You cannot say that you know Andy deeply, and that is difficult for certain people who want to be close to him."
Having lived on both sides of the economic divide, Garcia is predictably bullish on the idea that a man's social status is in no way a measure of his worth. "Just because you consider yourself in a higher level of the social structure doesn't mean you have more character or dignity than the gentleman serving you at the table, and I know that to be a fact," Garcia says, with that first-blood glint in his eye, familiar from performances in a couple of his retribution-heavy pictures. A former poor boy, dockworker and banquet-hall waiter, Garcia has overheard his share of racist asides from people who assumed he didn't understand English; he seems unlikely to forgive or forget anytime soon.
"He deals with everyone never on the level of whether you're the flavor of the month, but who you are as a person," says his Denver costar Treat Williams. "That was the thing that was most important to Andy: 'I don't care whether you're a grip or you're the executive producer of the film. You treat me with respect, I'll treat you with respect.''' Praising as "very proper stuff" some aspects of the Catholic faith he was reared in, Garcia himself says, "There's nothing wrong with 'Do onto others as you would like others to do onto you.'"
Of course, the flip side of the Golden Rule is "An eye for an eye," and there's a little of that in Andy, too: a steely "or else"-ness forever policing his interactions with people, just like when he was young. As an undersized, macho kid in Miami who was having trouble learning English, he frequently resorted to the universal language of fisticuffs, which landed him in the principal's office on a regular basis. "It was just about holding your ground, in a way," Garcia says. "You either retreat of hold your ground. And my sense, looking back on it, was you have to hold your ground" -- having already surrendered so much, back in Cuba.
But underneath all that is a raging sentimentalist, given to frequent, florid bursts of appreciation: A recent Stevie Wonder concert was not merely enjoyable; it was "an incredible, eloquent, majestic evening of music." Working with Jeff Bridges (in 8 Million Ways to Die) was not only fun; it was "a treasured time. If everyone was like him, it would be a better world." The quarterback of Garcia's beloved Miami Dolphins is more than talented -- "Dan (Marino) is a man of great character; I have great faith in him." Broach the subject of Cuban music and Garcia grows downright moist.
Last year he made his directing debut with a documentary/concert film about Israel "Cachao" Lopez, 78, a hugely influential Cuban musician and cocreator of the mambo, who had long been getting by on bar mitzvah-type gigs ("It's like going to a wedding and seeing Louis Armstrong playing in the band," Andy says). Now, thanks to Garcia's intervention, Cachao is a celebrated maestro on the club circuit.
"Andy has everything in life, and for him to spend the time to help somebody like Cachao...that is when he won my heart," says Latin-music impresario Emilio Estefan, who subsequently produced a Grammy-winning Cachao album with Garcia. "It's why we love him so much. He'll never forget out people." But Garcia benefited from the deal as well: Now and then he gets to drum with Cachao's band. (Asked if Garcia's any good on the congas, Cabrera Infante says without hesitation, "No -- that he is not.")
Now Garcia's trying to make a movie about Cuban music and exile called The Lost City, written by Cabrera Infante. His dream -- for the time being, impossible -- is to shoot the movie in Havana. So what does he make of a recent tabloid item that has movie mogul Peter Guber somehow circumventing the trade embargo in order to make his own Havana-based movie on location, with the support of his buddy Castro?
Garcia smiles sourly and looks away. "There you go. Only in Hollywood." He pauses. "Well, a lot of people have made the mistake to think they're buddies with Castro. There you go..." It's the only time I'll see him abashed.
The next day, I find Garcia sitting comfortably on some white patio furniture in the tropically landscaped back lawn of West Hollywood's Sunset Marquis, where I'm staying. A man-made waterfall softly burbles between the screeches of an exotic bird. Legs crossed, face pointed into the sun, Garcia looks like one of Francis Ford Coppola's dapper capos in a rare contemplative mood. "This is nice, huh?" he says. "Gloria and Emilio" -- the Estefans -- "stay in that bungalow when they're in town." The avocado tree that rustling overhead reminds him of the Garcia No.1, a breed of avocado that his father cultivated back in Havana. Narrowing his eyes, he inspects the lit Montecristo Cuban cigar he's got pinched between his thumb and forefinger and guides it toward his lips.
The day before, our conversation ended with a knock at the door; John Dahl, the director of The last Seduction, had come for a meeting with Andy. (They're thinking about collaborating on something.) Now Garcia's full of apologies for having launched into his discussion with Dahl without seeing me to the door. "It's not my nature to be that way," he says in a low register. "It was rude." Today, Garcia is open and relaxed from the start; I think he's pondered it hard overnight and decided I'm not out to get him.
Or perhaps he's disarmed by the reasonable approximation of Cuban flora and fauna that surrounds him. Garcia takes solace (his favourite word) in all things Cuban; it's no surprise to hear that his wife, Marivi, is also an exile, and that home is his comfort zone. "Most mornings I wake up with six women in my bed," he says with a smile -- referring not to the ministrations of some babelicious fans, but rather to his wife, his three girls under age 12, one of two dogs and a cat. "It's that nesting instinct. You all congregate in one place and everybody curls up together. And I rather like it."
Treat Williams calls Garcia's family "the most extraordinarily beautiful group of females, and he ain't ugly either, so there you are." Garcia seems braced for the onslaught of his daughters' future suitors; He laughs trying to recall what his good friend Joe Mantegna said when he was over at the house last New Year's Eve, about how fathers should greet their girls' dates. Something along the lines of "Come on in -- wanna see my gun collection?"
Garcia met his own future wife in a bar in Miami while he was attending college at Florida International University. Congenitally immune to ambivalence, he proposed to her that night. Of course, she said yes (though they didn't make it official until seven years later). "She's not without spunk," Garcia notes. "She says I proposed to every girl that evening, and I say, 'Well, yeah, but I didn't marry every girl that evening.'"
"When he's onscreen he's very good at loving women, you know?" says Meg Ryan. "It's amazing the way he looks at them" -- perhaps because he's had so much practice with his own wife. "I fell in love with her immediately," Garcia says. "On sight. She was the most spectacular thing I had ever seen in my life. It becomes a chemistry thing, too. All the senses are working at that point, not just sight but sound and smell. Smell is a big one. And touch. It all comes into play. Because ultimately we are just animals," he says, exhaling some smoke the old, dark sweet smell of sunbaked earth.
By Garcia's own estimation he was a promising athlete, an okay percussionist and a lousy student. So he figured he might end up a coach or a musician of some kind, until he discovered acting. He did variety shows and plays in Miami, improv in L.A. and eventually some TV and movies, which no one took much notice of until his virtuoso turn as an oily, feral coke dealer of Latino extraction called Angel, in 1986's 8 Million Ways to Die. Garcia was able to play the lowlife with high style and fierce wit, partly because he knew Angel's type well from the slick, testosterone-fueled nights of his youth.
Garcia knew, for instance, that these guys never travel alone, hence the thug posse always shadowing the character. He also came up with the novel idea of Angel's keeping a snow-cone machine in the truck of his car. "These guys are very gadget-oriented," he notes. "You go into their house and they have the best stereo; they have all the newest toys. That's what they spend their money on. And it's like a carryover for a kid from the street in South America, who buys snow cones off the guy who shaves ice. Angel's the kind of guy who says 'Now I can have my own goddamned machine in my car. Because I say so.' That was also the first ponytailed drug dealer in a movie, although I don't know if I'm proud to say it, since it contributed to the stereotype." A couple of hotel maids in powder-blue uniforms come up the path, carrying linens. "Como estan?" Garcia calls out.
He could have easily continued to exploit the urban-greaseball stereotype; he's got the mannerisms down -- the neck-and-shoulder mambo Angel does while straightening his tie, the blatant yank Vincent Mancini takes on his pelvic package as he negotiates with Michael Corleone. But Garcia didn't want to be typecast. "You have to fight it or else you're dead," he says. "Sometimes they'll throw buckets of money at you, and after so many years of struggling, if you have a family you do want to provide." Still, when he was offered the squinty killer Frank Nitti in The Untouchables, Garcia asked instead to read for the avenger George Stone. He won the role, which naturally led to a spate of cop parts. Now Garcia's offered everything from homeless men to pilots. Yet he still has to fight moviemakers' continual attempts to Spanish-up the surnames of his characters.
Garcia has no problem with confrontation or with saying no to directors -- especially if he's asked to play graphic love scenes. "It's very simple," he says. "I just say 'I'm not interested in doing it; I won't do it. And if that's important to your movie, get another actor.' My feeling has always been that the imagination is a lot more powerful than the visual: It's important to stimulate the audience, but let them take the ride on their own." And he's perfectly happy making unpopular, unexpected decisions, such as opting for the low-budget Denver picture, despite eighteen-hour-days, six-day weeks and a much lower salary than he's used to. But the exhilarating, character-driven story was too good to pass up. And Garcia was the undeniable big cheese on the set -- the "quarterback," according to the movie's producer, Cary Woods -- which Garcia doesn't seem to have minded at all.
"As a pro and a veteran of this stuff," says Woods, "Andy could always tell when someone needed a pat on the behind" -- especially the film's first-time director, Gary Fleder. "One time Andy and I were having a disagreement over something," Fleder recalls, "and he suddenly said, 'Look, let me tell you something. I give you as much respect as I do Francis Coppola. If I'm arguing with you, it's the same way I argue with Francis.' And that was the pivotal moment for me. It liberated me to be the director of the film." Of Garcia's constant and legendary off-camera support during shooting, his costar William Forsythe says, "You feel so naked -- you're out there, oozing emotion. Then you look up and there's Andy, tears streaming down his face."
Movie sets are Garcia's havens. Having fist-fought his way to glamorous respectability, he's happy in a world that rewards him as much for his obvious strength as for his ability -- his need, even -- to go to pieces sometimes.
A week or so after our last conversation, Garcia sent a couple of Cachao tapes my way, along with a brief typed note that ended, "Enjoy and mambo!"
I don't know about the mambo part, but I am curious to hear what are still siren songs for an exile who managed to find his way home.
Lucy Kaylin is a GQ senior writer