Andy Garcia
speaker
217 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Jan 2025
last heard Jan 2025
Andy Garcia’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
So that was the thing. So they knock on the door and I... Who the hell's knocking? And I move the curtain to see who's outside, because the door's here. And it's like the Marx Brothers. Four heads came in like, and the guy at the bottom, he says, gypsy lives around here. I go, excuse me?
I said, no, no, there's no gypsy lives in here.
I said, no. Sorry, there's no gypsy who lives here. And they left. I'm going like, what the hell is going on? Then I realized, I'm the gypsy. Some gypsy walking around said, oh, there's a gypsy who lives in there.
Anyway, but, you know, and you just begin, you know, you just begin finding your way around town. You know, I had to go get a get a job. You know, I worked as a waiter. I became a member of the Waiters Union, worked as a banquet waiter for many of the hotels, mostly the Beverly Hilton Hotel. I'd laid, you know, shingles. I worked at this company called Roadway.
You know, those trucks that say Roadway. I used to go, a friend of mine said, hey, I got a good gig. You go at seven o'clock at night. You're temporary help, so you don't have to be a member of the union. And you work from 7 to 7 or 7 to 5. And you either unload a truck by yourself or you strip it or you load it on your own. And we got there. There's a bunch of actors there.
Bryan Cranston was there. So, you know, it was, you know, just trying to pay the rent while you find your way in the business. So that was it.
Well, I started, you know, I started immediately taking classes, you know, going backstage. I was working at the comedy store. You were doing improv, right? You were taking improvisational classes nearby. And performing in the house group there. And that got me some attention and a little job here and there. No money. No, for free. But I got a gig on the pilot of Hill Street Blues.
You know, the little sprinkle things. Didn't really have an agent. The ones I had were like... were like a guy who say, okay, you meet him and they go like, bring me some resumes and you bring them and he would stamp, you know, he'd take a stamp and put his name on your resume and every so often they would send you out, but not really.
While also telling you to change things about yourself, correct? Yeah, a lot of them would say, change your name, you know, lose your accent, change your name, fix your teeth or whatever, you know, and come back to me once you've done all that. And who is that person going to be when I come back? I don't know who that guy is.
So, you know, it was hard because in those days, if you had a Hispanic last name, the opportunities were very limited. Now it's more diverse, there's more opportunity.
maybe not as much as still underrepresented yes but still there's there is opportunities you know when when i was there there were very little parts for anybody because they would stereotype you because of your name it's not like said oh he can play italian he can play this he can play that no you're garcia and some of the parts that were mostly available were like gang members mexican gang members and
and maids on the female side. So I couldn't get those parts. They wouldn't see me as those characters. The rare audition that I would even have. So it was hard. It was hard, but I just hung tough. I got married in 82 and my wife was crazier than I was because she says, I said, I got to go back. This is what I want to do. I know I have nothing to show for it.
But because she had been coming out to visit me, she was living in Miami and she, you know, she was here and she had seen me on stage. She would see me on stage here. But, you know, she would come to that apartment, you know, this is what I had to offer that, you know, But she says, I'm coming with you, you know? So she was, you know, mother's no best, you know?
Yeah, I'd never been here before, you know, like most people. You just arrive by plane. And luckily, I had one place to go, which was Steven's house, you know, to kind of go like that. And for a couple of weeks, I didn't want to hang there too long. I didn't want to impose. So immediately, I started looking for a place. I paid $200 a month for that little place. Imagine the quality of the joint.
And you don't have the $200. No. I came with like $2,000 in my pocket that I had worked the summer in a discotheque as a maitre d' sommelier kind of guy making money.
No, yeah, it's you know, but we were young, you know, and the adventure began and and then it was just kind of hanging tough, you know, for a while. And eventually, you know, you start little by little making your way. And I used to work one of the things that and then we had a child right away.
So we got married in 82 and a year and a half later, the daughter was there, you know, Dominique, my oldest. And we were here living in the valley. Luckily, a friend of mine, an actor, was in what we call a wallah group, like a voiceover group, where you do all the replacement, all the background vocals in movies and television.
It's a union gig, and you do an episode of Cagney and Lacey or whatever, and then when it airs the second time, you get paid again. Not much, though. Well, but every time you went, it was like 300 bucks. I worked two or three times a week on that, different shows. I had a place, I was buying pampers, had a roof over our head, a house we rented, and I was able to provide for my family.
And just little by little, I got a better agent, actually a manager who started getting me a little bit more interview. It kind of began like that. But during that time, there was, I remember specifically, there was a moment where it had to do with like an audition. I did something, I remember the exact moment where I saw the light at the end of the tunnel. I saw it.
All the years prior to that, it was like, where's the light? Where's the light? I know it's out there and I'm here to, I want to see it. I mean, I have it in my head, in my dreams, but I haven't seen it, you know? What was the light? The light was, I guess it was like, got to a point in my craft that... You had confidence? I had it in here. I said, oh, that's it. There it is. There it is.
Showing 81–100 of 217 · page 5 of 11
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