|
|
CLASS ACT
 Cool and confident, ANDY GARCIA never looks back — except, perhaps, when the golf cart’s in reverse. BY JOSH SENS
In his new film, City Island, which opens this spring, Andy Garcia plays Vince Rizzo, a sweet but simpleminded New York corrections officer who smokes cigarettes and harbors secrets, shrouding private truths in a small web of white lies that grows into a tangle of domestic deceptions. His character is married but has a son who’s never met him. He dreams of being an actor but conceals the ambition, sneaking out to classes where he haltingly explores his dramatic range.
The role, in other words, is something of a stretch. In real life, after all, Garcia is a fit and worldly family man who speaks forthrightly in the lilting cadence of his native Cuba, not in the spitfire rhythms of New York. He steers clear of tobacco, except on the golf course or on sport-fishing outings, when he’s been known to savor a fine cigar. He lives in Los Angeles, where he unapologetically pursues his passions and his star is etched on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
As for dramatic range, Garcia, 53, has played presidents and poets, bartenders and bureaucrats, mafiosos and government agents, and dozens of characters in between. As an actor, writer, producer, and composer, he has had a hand in slapstick comedies and slick procedurals; in sleepers and thrillers; in studio blockbusters and independent films. His work has earned him an Oscar nomination and a reputation as a thinking-fan’s favorite, a screen idol with substance, an A-lister with a high IQ.
Bottom line: If portraying Vince Rizzo is a departure, Garcia is the right man for the part.
“Is it difficult to inhabit a character that’s very different from who I am in real life?” Garcia asks. “Well, that’s all part of an actor’s craft. It’s like asking a doctor if he can do elbow surgery in the morning followed by knee surgery in the afternoon. It’s something they’ve trained their whole life to do.”
 With nearly half a lifetime of experience in his profession, Garcia gracefully balances his active, sporting interests with the globe-trotting schedule of a leading man. Last fall found him in the former Soviet republic of Georgia, filming a political thriller of the same name. In the movie, Garcia plays the country’s maverick president, Mikheil Saakashvili, at the height of a tense standoff with neighboring Russia.
No sooner had the jet lag from Eastern Europe worn off when Garcia took off once again. This time Florida awaited. The Miami Symphony Orchestra was performing an orchestral arrangement of the music from The Lost City, a film Garcia directed and for which he also wrote the score.
Even now, with the most hectic of his travel months behind him, Garcia shows no signs of letting up. In collaboration with Hilary Hemingway, “Papa’s” niece, Garcia has penned a script based on Ernest Hemingway’s relationship with his captain of 20 years, Gregorio Fuentes — a relationship that helped inspire The Old Man and the Sea. An avid sportfisherman himself, Garcia first came upon the material years ago and couldn’t get the story out of his head.
“In every aspect of my life — work, sports, music, family — I go with my intuition,” Garcia says. “If something speaks to me, I follow it with all my heart.”
Even with his plate piled high with projects, Garcia makes time to indulge his favorite outdoor hobby, golf, most publicly at Pebble Beach. Every year since 1996, at the fabled links in Monterey, California, Garcia has taken part in the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am, a serious competition that frequently devolves into a festive goof-off. Usually, Garcia partners with PGA veteran Paul Stankowski and plays in the same foursome as his close friend, comedian George Lopez. Alongside the antic Lopez, Garcia cuts the figure of the courtly fashion plate, his dark hair framed by his trademark beret.
In 1997, the second year he participated in the pro-Am, Garcia and Stankowski won the team competition, with Garcia playing to an 18 handicap. But the actor has since whittled his index to nine, a hard standard to match under tournament pressure.
 “Of course I get nervous,” Garcia says. “The best players in the world get nervous on the first tee, so why shouldn’t I? But I also think of fear and confidence as coexisting. it’s like acting, in that sense. Often your best work comes when you put yourself in an uncomfortable place.”
Comparing acting to athletics comes easily to Garcia, who first swung a golf club long before he memorized a script. Born in Cuba, he was raised in Miami, in a modest home that made up for in warmth what it lacked in wealth. Across the street from his family’s house was a small par-three course, and, a few blocks down, an 18-hole municipal course. inspired by Arnold Palmer, whose charismatic style he found captivating, Garcia scraped together money for a starter set of clubs and taught himself the game, often lighting out at daybreak to squeeze in a free round.
“If you played that early in the morning, you’d have sprinklers going off all around you, but you didn’t have to pay,” Garcia says. “After that, it was a dollar-fifty.”
From an early age, Garcia excelled at sports. He quarterbacked his Miami Pop Warner squad to a city championship and started in the backcourt on his high school basketball team. But acting was his calling. in his early 20s, with a degree in drama from Florida International University, he migrated west, intent on following the path of screen stars he’d admired, such as James Coburn and Steve McQueen.
In his lean Hollywood years (“When I got started, auditions were hard to come by, let alone roles,” he says), Garcia lived by his father’s mantra: Never take a step backward, not even to gain momentum.
Early success began in the 1980s, playing drug kingpin Angel Moldonado in 8 Million Ways to Die and then G-man George Stone in The Untouchables. Then came casino slickster Terry Benedict in Ocean’s Eleven, Ocean’s Twelve, and Ocean’s Thirteen (pictured below). Along the way, Garcia also earned a fixed place in the industry’s brightest constellation with Oscar and Golden Globe nominations for best supporting actor for his fiery performance as Vincent Mancini, in The Godfather: Part III (pictured left).
“I’ve had some success,” Garcia says. “But to borrow from something I once heard Michael Jordan say, ‘I have succeeded only because I have failed many times before.’”
Having mothballed golf for decades while he worked to make his name, Garcia re-embraced the game in his late 30s. He joined Lakeside Country Club, a sylvan layout across the street from Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank, which has long been the home of Hollywood’s big hitters, from Frank Sinatra to Jack Nicholson. Garcia calls his membership “an investment in my sanity.”
“Any day on a golf course is a great day,” Garcia says. “Sometimes I get frustrated, but I never get mad.”
So engrossed is Garcia in the pleasures of the game that he pays small heed to details that drive so many golfers to obsession. Course rankings? Some of Garcia’s favorite public tracks are Pebble Beach and Spyglass, two of the three venues in the AT&T Pro-Am rotation, but unlike most enthusiasts who’ve played those landmark layouts, he doesn’t keep a course map in his head.
“What’s that little par-three at Pebble that plays out toward the water?” Garcia asks of Pebble’s iconic seventh hole. “All those holes along the water are just magical, but I don’t pay a lot of attention to which number is which. The way I see it, I’m just going for a beautiful walk with some clubs in my hand.”
Off the course, Garcia’s recall is more acute. An accomplished composer, conga player, and pianist, Garcia has a mind for music and a memory filled with more songs than the average iPod. (Ask him, for instance, to hum the first few bars of any Cuban composition and odds are he’ll rise quickly to the task.) He also leads a band, the CineSon All-Stars, an assemblage of masters in traditional Cuban music like rumba and mambo. The group has performed live at venues ranging from the Nokia Theatre in Los Angeles to the B.B. King Blues Club in New York.
The All-Stars have also played Miami, where Garcia maintains a vacation home. A cherished refuge for him; his wife, Marivi; and their four children, the house sits on the water, with resplendent views. Garcia also owns a boat, which gives him easy access to prime sportfishing spots. On his frequent excursions, he’ll set off on a whim for wherever the action takes him, chasing wahoo all the way to the Bahamas or angling for sailfish in the Gulf Stream off Miami Beach.
“Everyone in my family, we’re all fishermen,” Garcia says. “There’s just something about being on the water. We’re drawn to it. It’s in our blood.”
Extended fishing trips aside, Garcia is a man of moderation. On the rare occasion when he reaches for a cocktail, the drink includes well-aged Bacardi rum. His cigar of choice is the Fuente Fuente Opus X, an elegant hand-rolled smoke produced in the Dominican Republic by Garcia’s friend, acclaimed cigar maker Carlos Fuente. But he only lights up on special occasions — during a round at Pebble, say, or to punctuate a festive holiday meal.
Not that Garcia treats his body as a temple. He settles instead for deep respect.
“I try to watch what I eat,” he says. “But it’s not something my life revolves around.” Having passed the ideal age for pounding the pavement and pick-up basketball, Garcia keeps fit by running on a treadmill in his home and by doing Pilates three days a week. When time allows, he walks the golf course. But the strictures of his schedule more often require him to take a cart, the better to fit in a quick nine holes.
“The full 18 is always more enjoyable,” he says. “But I do what I need to do to get in my fix.”
Though he plays many rounds with fellow Lakeside member Lopez, Garcia is not a Hollywood hobnobber, an inclination that’s reflected in his choice of films.
At this point in his career, Garcia can cherry-pick his projects, and while he’s happy to take part in a studio blockbuster, his heart lies closer to small-budget films like City Island (above and left), also starring Julianna Margulies.
Fortunately, Garcia’s real life is nothing like the movie, a chain-reaction of riotous events and chaos at every turn, except that his character gets the part.
|
|