Andy Garcia Attracted to HBO Role of Bird Smuggler

Cable viewers can catch a couple of hot stars from the big screen in a new HBO movie: Ellen Barkin from “The Big Easy” and Andy Garcia, who went from virtual unknown to star of a box-office smash, “The Untouchables.”

In “Clinton and Nadine,” Garcia plays a down-on-his-luck smuggler of exotic birds who gets mixed up in a plot to run guns for the Contras. The movie premieres Saturday.

Garcia was born in Cuba, but his family fled as political refugees in 1961 and settled in Miami Beach.

“Clinton and Nadine” was shot on location in Florida.

“I’ve been here (Los Angeles) for 10 years, but I still like Miami better because of the weather,” Garcia said. “It’s closer to the Caribbean. The downfall for me (here) is the smog. I like the feeling of tropical weather. I like a tropical night with the breeze off the ocean. The Caribbean is in my blood.

“I was only 5 when I left Cuba, so I’m obsessed with it. I’ve built my own memory of it that’s greater than what it was.”

“Clinton and Nadine” also stars 1988 Oscar nominee Morgan Freeman (“Street Smart”) as a slick Miami lawyer who is part of the scheme to raise money for the Contras.

Garcia plays Clinton Dillard, a small-time smuggler who is quitting the business when he discovers that his lawyer-brother has been murdered. A key to the murder is a cassette tape, which he finds in a woman’s purse. The purse belongs to Nadine Powers, a high-class hooker with a baby and a dream of living an idyllic life in Canada.

The two are quickly swept up and find themselves in Costa Rica--in a lot of trouble.

“The key for me was that Jerry Schatzberg was directing,” said Garcia. “He’d directed ‘Scarecrow’ and ‘Panic in Needle Park.’ I met him in New York, and when he told me he was talking to Ellen Barkin and Morgan Freeman, that was the icing on the cake.”

The Costa Rican scenes were shot on a 30-acre estate in Fort Lauderdale. “It was filled with monkeys and they became quite a sound problem,” Garcia said. “Every morning the owners would come out on the balcony and feed them. Some became quite aggressive, and one day they attacked the person I was sitting with.”

Garcia also recently co-starred in “Stand and Deliver,” a true story about a crusading teacher, played by Edward James Olmos. He said another reason he liked the role of Clinton was the chance to play a non-minority character. Clinton is from Oklahoma.

“I’ve played a lot of ethnic characters, using Spanish or Italian,” he said. “Clinton’s life was in limbo. He’d been an athlete. I could tell he was in the line of business he was in and spending his time in Mexico to alienate himself from the baseball world. It was painful; he wanted to be a loner. In Nadine, he found a woman going through the same alienation.

“I was a jock myself, except for me it was basketball. But that didn’t pan out, and I was in limbo. My interest in the arts sort of took over. After my first college play, it sort of took over. I think there’s a great parallel between sports and acting, especially basketball, which is very spontaneous. You have the thrill of the unknown.”

Garcia’s other credits include “Eight Million Ways to Die” and “The Mean Season.” His next film is “The Sixth Family,” which will be filmed in Chicago with Kevin Bacon and Jennifer Grey. But shooting has been delayed by the Writers Guild of America strike.

After “The Untouchables,” in which he played George Stone, one of the agents recruited by Eliot Ness, Garcia went to London for a small film called “American Roulette.”

“You can’t imagine the ramifications of a successful film like ‘The Untouchables,”’ he said. “It helps you get more work. Your choices are enhanced. I know actors who go their whole lives without a successful film.”