García’s friend and Big Gold Brick co-star Oscar Isaac did it, as did Psych actor James Roday Rodriguez, who in 2020 announced his decision to reclaim the surname he was given at birth.
“They always encourage you to change your name.”Ĭhanging one’s name to hide their Latin roots is a practice at least as old as Rita Hayworth, and it remains pervasive to this day. You can play Latin, but you can also play Indian, or you can play Italian,’” García recalled. “The agent would see an actor that had a Hispanic surname and say, ‘You’re limiting yourself. That was common, García said he spent much of his early career funneled into auditions for Mexican gangster characters thanks to his Latin surname, only to find out in the room that he didn’t “look” the part. In a 1991 Sun Sentinel interview, García recalled a comment he once received from an agent: “Fix your teeth, change your hair, and lose your accent and I’ll represent you.”
Andy garcia and meg ryan tv#
“It took a very long time.” It was seven years, to be exact, before he landed his career-boosting role in the 1985 thriller The Mean Season.Īt that time, the media landscape included only a handful of studios, a few broadcast TV networks, and PBS-so opportunities were scarce, especially for actors who fell outside Hollywood’s conventional box. “When I got here, I didn’t get the same kind of reception,” García said. When a young García first arrived in Los Angeles in 1978, flush with cash from a summer job at a disco club, he had only one friend in the city: fellow Cuban American actor Steven Bauer, who enjoyed early-career success in Scarface and urged García to make the move. The 66-year-old actor has been known over the decades to be a private person, but he does not mince words about how the industry has historically treated anyone with a Latin surname-or the joy he’s nonetheless gleaned over the years from working with heavy-hitters like Francis Ford Coppola, Brian de Palma, Ridley Scott, Diane Keaton, and Meryl Streep. “I need some spring cleaning in the fall!”Īs National Hispanic Heritage Month came to a close, García spoke with The Daily Beast about his long career in Hollywood, the state of Latinx representation in film, and the challenges he faced while making his passion project The Lost City-a love letter to the Cuba his family left behind in 1961. “It’s engulfing me,” he adds with a touch of levity. When complimented on his decorating, however, García affably corrects me: This is not décor, he says, but “things thrown around.” Seated in his studio for our Zoom interview, the actor tells me in that distinct and distinguished murmur, “This is where I live.” Sunlight bounces around the room, illuminating an appealingly cluttered menagerie-a stack of books on the coffee table here, four conga drums there… and two Panama hats side by side on the back of a tan leather couch.Īs a devout maximalist, I’m enchanted-and perhaps reminded of my late abuelo’s office, which also pulled off a certain organized-but-chock-a-block je ne sais quoi. Andy García looks like he’s ready for an Architectural Digest photoshoot.
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