Hunting for a Serial Killer

'I Wake Up and Wonder What It Was That Woke Me'

Starring in this week's TV-movie 'Manhunt', A Martinez remembers all too well the chilling real-life terror of Las Angeles' 'Night Stalker'

by Elaine Warren, TV Guide, 11/11/89

The late afternoon air was hot and wretched as the cast and crew of the NBC TV-movie "Manhunt:  Search for the Night Stalker" invaded a small wooden house in the suburbs of Los Angeles for the final two days of filming.  Inside the house, A Martinez rehearsed his role as Gil Carillo, one of two police detectives hot on the tracks of the deranged killer terrorizing Los Angeles, and had no trouble identifying with the obsession of the detective he was portraying.

    "That period of time forever changed the way I sleep," Martinez said later of the real events that took place in the summer of 1985.  "Before I go to bed, I seal my house, and then I wake up a lot.  I hear things.  I wake up and wonder what it was that woke me."

    Although the movie ends with the arrest of Richard Ramirez, the man who in real life was accused of the murders, there was a certain hushed jubilance that crept over the set when word of the outcome of Ramirez's trial filtered in as a kind of coda to the script.  Outside on the street, where cast and crew loitered in between takes, one of the  crew members held a copy of the day's newspaper containing a screamer headline:  "Guilty!  Ramirez convicted as Night Stalker."

    A few days later, Martinez was out of his detective's coat and tie and back in his blue jeans on the set of NBC's Santa Barbara, where he reigns as resident heartthrob.  But the 41-year-old actor hadn't yet shaken off his role in "Night Stalker".  The experience left him with enormous respect for the real Gil Carillo, a man so preoccupied with the case that he went to bed every night with a police radio so he could listen to reports as they came in.  "He's got a huge heart," Martinez says in his Santa Barbara dressing room at lunch.  "He manages to have his humanity impact to a remarkable degree.  You get the sense that he's pulled off an extraordinary trick, that he's managed to isolate having to deal with all this darkness and not let it wreck him.  But I know he's got a lot of pain from what he does."

    This is not the first time Martinez has played a detective.  Over his 20-year career, he's appeared in numerous cops-and-robbers shows, most often cast as the cop, but occasionally as the robber.  "Especially earlier in my career when I had long hair, I was almost always a dope dealer or some sort of petty hood.  I did an awful lot of bad guys.  It's a lot of fun to play people without a conscience." 

    For the last five years on Santa Barbara, though, Martinez has played a character with a double conscience -- double agent-turned-detective Cruz Castillo.  And since the actor is attached to his character for the long haul, he finds it a blessing that Castillo happens to be immensely likable.  "If you're going to do something like this, it's wonderful to play someone that you can respect.  I've done this guy almost 1100 times, and if you're going to put your foot that far forward, it had better be your good foot."

    If Martinez's Santa Barbara costar Marcy Walker is to be believed, Cruz Castillo's good-naturedness is not far from Martinez's own temperament.  "He's one of the sweetest men I've ever met," gushes Walker, who plays Martinez's on-screen wife, Eden Capwell.  "I've known him for a real long time, and what you see is what you get.  He's down-to-earth and honest.  I'm really happy he's my friend."

    Martinez grew up in a suburb of Los Angeles as the oldest of six children.  "A" stands for Adolfo, after his father and grandfather, although as a child Martinez was affectionately referred to as "Little A," "A Bone," "A-frame," or sometimes "On Layaway."  His close-knit family was musical, singing folk songs at home and participating in church choirs, and Martinez made his professional debut at 12 by winning a talent competition at the Hollywood Bowl for his rendition of the Harry Belafonte standard "Kingston Market."  Later, he was in a surfing band in high school.  Shortly before entering UCLA, Martinez switched his intended major from political science to drama.  After three years of college, he left and leapt into his career with a role in a movie called "Born Wild," a story about racial strife at a San Diego high school.

    "They were looking for Hispanic actors, and in those days there weren't many people who were in serious training," he says.

    In general, Martinez believes being Hispanic has not been either an advantage or a disadvantage in his career.  "I've played the good guys and the bad guys.  I've played peasants and professionals.  Occasionally you hear someone say that it's considered hot to be Hispanic now.  I think that's a relative judgment, but it's certainly better now than it's ever been."

    Martinez and his wife, Leslie, have been married for seven years.  They met at the American Film Institute, where she was operating the camera for a film in which he was appearing.  Their encounter sounds just as dramatic as his soap romance with Eden Capwell.  "We were both involved with other people at the time, so we just noticed each other," he recalls.  "About 18 months later, I found myself alone and thinking about her, so I called her up and started moving myself into her life."   They now have two small children, whom their lives revolve around.  "Our lives are utterly focused on the babies," says Martinez.  "We went to a movie three months ago and maybe six months before that."

    Does it sound as if A Martinez has life nailed down exactly the way he wants it?  "That's the ironic thing," he says.  "When I was younger, especially as an actor on the make, I would thank God that I didn't have a family to weigh me down.  I thought I'd really be in trouble then.  But the truth of it is, it's just the opposite.  All of a sudden it changes you.  It's so amazing to be liberated from your need to..."  He thinks about it a minute "...look after your self.  Having a family brings out a more efficient side of you."

  Return to Interviews/Articles page