Face to Watch:  A Martinez

L.A. Law

by Alan Carter

Entertainment Weekly, 9/11/92

In eight years on the soap Santa Barbara, A Martinez has survived his share of implausible moments.  Like the time a homing device was implanted in his brain - without his knowing it.  So it's no surprise that Martinez's death in the gas chamber in an L.A. Law guest shot two years ago was no impediment to his returning to Law in a new role this fall.

Okay, Martinez (whose first name is Adolphe) admits he was "a little surprised" when the show's producers proposed to revive him from the criminal dead and make him a litigator in McKenzie, Brackman.  But he couldn't refuse.  The first time around, Martinez, 43, had been wowed by the prep work done by the Law-yers.  "In 1990," he recalls, "they handed me this medical document that discussed how cyanide attacks organisms, and a short story by Sartre about a condemned man in a Turkish prison.  That experience still reverberates."

Speaking of reverberating, Martinez's career has rebounded from more sudden twists than an arcade road race.  He played Meryl Streep's butler-lover in 1989's She-Devil, a film that was supposed to do big things for him.  It didn't.  That same year he starred in the low-budget cult film PowWow Highway - which won him critical praise on several continents.

With his heartthrob role on Santa Barbara, to which he bids farewell this month, Martinez helped free daytime TV from the stereotype of the Hispanic as street tough/bad guy.  Martinez (he was once married to actress Mare Winningham and is now remarried with two children) admits he turned down SB three times ("I can be stupid"), but he's throwing no such roadblocks in his path now.  He took the Law role unquestioningly.  "All I asked," he says, "is that the guy be strong and have a romantic strain."   And a gas mask, just in case.

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