A Martinez:  The Other Side of the Law

SOW, 6/94

by Janet Di Lauro

Thanks to Rosie in Australia!

    Now that A Martinez -- who won an Emmy playing Santa Barbara's Cruz Castillo and most recently appeared as Daniel Morales on L.A. Law -- has completed production on the movie One Night Stand (originally titled Strangers in the Night), and USA's Deconstructing Sarah, he's preparing to tackle the lead in the play Bandido!, which plays June9-July24 at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles.

    Martinez plays Tiburcio Vasquez, a figure from California history.  In fact, the actor is drawing on the stories of Vasquez that his grandmother used to tell him.  "His family owned a lot of land and when the Gold Rush came he was one of the victims of the takeover," he explains.  "And he didn't go down quietly.  He went outside the law and was hunted for 20 years before he was finally found and hung."  The actor was reluctant to commit to this project so soon after completing Deconstructing Sarah, but "I figured a stage role like this doesn't come along very often, and I couldn't afford not to do it."

    In Deconstructing Sarah, Martinez plays Kenny opposite former L.A. Law leading lady Sheila Kelly (she played Gwen).  "Kenny's a flat-out bad guy," the actor laughs.  Still, Sarah becomes involved with him, "so she has to deal with the consequences.  This movie gives Sheila and I the chance to sort of (word unclear) the relationship we sketched out in L.A. Law but never quite got to play."

    Martinez plays a similarly menacing character in the erotic thriller One Night Stand, which also stars Ally Sheedy.  (The movie was screened at the Cannes Film Festival this past May.)  "It's the story of a woman (Sheedy's Nikki) searching for true love and doing something incredibly dangerous in that search," he says.  "I play Jeff, a guy she picks up in a bar, which proves to be a big mistake."  One of the highlights of the project was working under Talia Shire's (of Rocky and the Godfather films) direction.  "Talia was a joy," Martinez raves.  "She's an actor, so she knows exactly what you do and don't say to actors."

    On the heels of making these two movies, Martinez began working on his first album.  "I started playing in bands when I was 15," he says.  "I drifted away from it when my acting career started to happen, but I never stopped writing."  When the actor finally had a breather, returning to music "seemed like the thing to do," he says.  So he began compiling material for an album.

    "I wrote the bulk of it about two years ago, although there are songs from earlier," says Martinez.  "One particular song I wrote for my wife, Leslie, when we were first falling in love.  It almost seems like prophecy now."  That song, Baby I Never, is one of many heartfelt tunes on the Fragrance and Thorn album (not yet scheduled for release).  "That's the name of a song on the album, (word unclear) has to do with people getting together and passing on life.  The whole album is sort of riddled with a sense of hope and devotion."

    Despite his post-soap success, Martinez admits he still longs for his SB days.  "I think it was bad on every level that the show went off the air," he says candidly.  "Bad for me, bad for daytime, bad for television, and bad for all the people that cared about it.  It had everything in place to develop and change the genre.  Then, it just got botched.  It's a flat-out drag"

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