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Andy Garcia - Biography

Actor. Born on April 12, 1956, in Havana, Cuba. When he was five, his family fled from the Castro regime to Miami Beach, where his father, a former lawyer, set up a prosperous cosmetic business. While attending the Florida International University in Miami, young Garcia began performing in regional theater. In 1978 he moved to Los Angeles, where he appeared with an improvisational group and played bits on television, supplementing his income as a waiter and furniture hauler. In films from 1983, he gradually moved up from supporting to starring roles, typically playing intense, unrestrained, action-bound characters, like the young G-man in "The Untouchables" and the heir to the Corleone family business in "The Godfather Part III".

During his rise to stardom, Garcia hasn't lived according to either the "Latin lover" or the "Hollywood debauchery" stereotypes. He's been married to Maria Victoria (whom everyone calls Marivi), a fellow Cuban émigré, for almost fifteen years, and vigorously guards her privacy and that of their three young daughters. He still clings to old-fashioned values; he stands when a woman enters the room, and refuses to do nude scenes (he prefers to let romance bloom in the viewer's imaginations). He once walked out of an audition after he was told to take his shirt off. Garcia has shunned the Hollywood scene, and instead spends his off time with his family at residences in the San Fernando Valley and Florida. Garcia has also resisted roles that might bring him megastar status; he insists that quality is his main concern, and while he faltered slightly with Jennifer 8 and Hero, he won raves for his performance as a saint-like husband to Meg Ryan's alcoholic wife in 1994's When a Man Loves a Woman.

In 1995, Garcia headlined the box-office duds Things To Do in Denver When You're Dead and Steal Big, Steal Little (he played twins in the latter). He fared much better with his star turn in Sidney Lumet's Night Falls on Manhattan (1997), in which he played an assistant D.A. assigned to prosecute a drug dealer responsible for the shooting of his police-detective father. He says he has an "emotional boycott" against returning while Castro in still in power, but Cuban influence still permeates his life and work. Garcia produced and directed Cachao: Like His Rhythm There Is No Other, a tribute to the Cuban mambo artist whose record Master Sessions Volume I Garcia also produced. Garcia's next labor of love is The Lost City, an epic about a young man forced to leave his homeland amid revolution. The screenplay is by Cuban novelist Guillermo Cabrera Infante, and Garcia will star and direct.