The 'A' Team

by Robert Schork

Undeniable talent and a refreshingly genuine disposition keep GH's A Martinez in a league of his own.

    Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield couldn't get any better publicity if they tried.  Thanks to a chance encounter in one of their shops, A Martinez and Jackie Zeman (Roy and Bobbie, General Hospital) turned an ice cream run into a treat for Martinez' fans as well:  his surprise return to daytime after a seven-year absence. 

    "I ran into Jackie at a Ben & Jerry's and she goes, 'Hey, what's up?'  We were talking and she said, 'It would be a really interesting thing that would happen if you were to be available.'  I said, 'That would be cool.'  I had lunch with (GH head writer Robert) Guza after that and just talked about 'What if...?'  We just kicked the idea around.  And then this year, when I came back from doing that wonderful Emmy retrospective (Martinez joined his Emmy-winning peers during a segment in this year's Daytime Emmy telecast), that was such a great experience.  Even my dad was going, 'Didn't that dawn on you how special that was?'  So I put some feelers out:   Would you be interested?  ABC really jumped on it."

    As ABC's fervent enthusiasm for the actor demonstrates -- that fortuitous encounter in the ice cream shop notwithstanding -- Martinez is anything but a flavor of the month.  What propels his lasting popularity in the industry are the twin engines of his inimitable talent and the universally positive regard and respect he has from his peers and other colleagues.

    While many actors have one of these assets going for them, it is rare to find an actor gifted with both.   By all accounts, personally and professionally, A Martinez is a class act.   Martinez credits his upbringing, and specifically, learning from his own mistakes, for his down-to-earth disposition and genuine nature.  "You know, my mom says, 'You are who you are.'  Her point of view is this:  All her kids were who they were from the beginning.  All her kids showed up with their basic vibe intact, to an astonishing degree, really."

    The eldest child in his family, Martinez "gained the advantage in the sense of having a lot of (his mother's) attention.  She wasn't working too much and she was with me when I was a baby, and she was teaching me phonics so that I would have a good start in school.   She did a really, really nice job of taking care of me when I was starting out.   And even the tendency to allow me and the rest of us of get away with murder...I thought report cards were a joke.  It's amazing how we were able to continue.   But even that, there was something about that too that made life less scary.   A midterm you could always duck:  shelter was always nearby.  I don't think it is good for the long term, necessarily, because you can start to slack off when you are always avoiding a hard day."

    Like most parents, Martinez has swung the pendulum a bit in the opposite direction in rearing his children, being a bit stricter and implementing more structure than he had himself.  To that end, he and his wife, Leslie, have carved out a haven of old-fashioned family values in the sometimes value-bereft milieu of la-la land.  "Out here, your kids are well-aware of what their peers' lifestyles are like, and their peers' parents.  We run a tighter ship than most, and they're not real pleased about it sometimes.  To a certain degree, certainly intellectually, they are very, very strong.  They have strong senses of themselves, so you have to debate everything.  But if you're persistent and really perceive the underlying reasons for it, it's not hard to hold your position."  Together with his wife. "There is something about the combination of my need for structure and enforcement and her need for ease and appetite for saying yes.  It really works, because they get the best of both.  It'll get harder when they're older; it's supposed to be.  They're supposed to eventually win."

    Heavy parent participation is another key ingredient in the Martinez family, as evidenced by the actor's involvement in his son's Little League.  Imagine being a Little League mother, and having A Martinez coach your kid!  "I'm no big news in my home town, which is really great," Martinez says with a laugh.  " I think it's surprising for people that I'm getting a little bit of attention again.  It's like a lot of people are impressed; they knew me as some guy, as an actor who was around for a long time.  I'm crazy about baseball, really crazy about the game.  It meant so much to me and so much to Cody.  To be able to gain the trust of these parents, there's love and they're real serious about their kids' path in the game.  We get scrutinized, there's a lot of pressure in this position.  I spent a lot of sleepless nights over it. You learn to give to the kids and after a while you have a relationship with a lot of the kids.  It's just like my dad.  He was a teacher, and for years I was aware of people coming up to him and saying, "I became a teacher because of you.'  He was that kind of teacher.  There is so much weight in being able to participate in the lives of kids when they're still not finished."

    Martinez is not only actively involved in his children's lives, he also has made them his top priority, even when it means putting them ahead of his career.  He turned down an earlier opportunity to work again with his good friend Jill Farren Phelps, who is now executive producer of One Life to Live, to spare his family the upheaval of uprooting and switching coasts.  "There was some talk about me coming back and doing One Life to Live, and we really took a serious look at that.  But we just couldn't make it work for our family.  I've got three children.  At the time, the two older ones had invested in certain activities -- my son in baseball and my daughter in acting -- where they had to find a place in the community to be allowed to have responsibility.  They really had to earn it.  My daughter got nonspeaking walk-on parts in these little plays she was in when she was younger, and now she's playing leads, and she earned it.  My son's the same way, from being suspect as a ballplayer to being a star.  The best was when I saw Cody pitch a perfect game.  It's like you take them out of stuff like that and they have to start all over and prove themselves again."

    Martinez knows something about proving himself, too, although he defers the lion's share of the credit to chance.  "I've been lucky, real lucky.  I mean, I work hard, but I've had real good luck.  I've had incredible luck in my marriage -- that's huge.  Even in terms of my career, a lot of the early breaks I got were situations where they didn't really want me, but the person they wanted they couldn't get.  So I'm just sort of left standing, the debris clears and I get it by default -- and it works out good for you, and the next thing you know," A Martinez has joined the A-list of daytime actors.   What catapulted Martinez into the charmed circle of daytime royalty was his tour de force role as private detective/sometime cop Cruz Castillo on Santa Barbara.   As half of the Cruz/Eden supercouple (Marcy Walker, once again All My Children's Liza, played Eden), Martinez enjoyed unprecedented popularity and critical acclaim -- both here and abroad, as SB was an international sensation.

    Being half of a phenomenon that took on a life of its own is something Martinez has in common with one of his new co-stars at GH, Anthony Geary (Luke).  "In fact, he said that to me in the hallway last week.  He mentioned that we were on a similar path.  Although certainly, what happened between Luke and Laura was way higher profile than what happened with Cruz and Eden, at least in America.  But it was extraordinary.  It still is.  It validated my career and gave me a future, which I'd been looking for for a long time.  Plus, so many places I go, I get to experience people being happy to see me.  Pretty much anywhere I go to do anything, any day of my life at some point in time, someone is going to look at me and realize who I am and just smile.  And it's a really wonderful thing to have happen in your life.  It's awfully hard to feel bad when you have that going on all of the time.  Plus, it makes you more careful about your grooming," he says with a big warmhearted laugh.

    Reflecting on the experience, Martinez concedes that lightning can't always strike twice.  "Well, it is certainly a possibility, I don't think we reasonably expect that to happen too often.   Part of what happened between Marcy and me was just dumb luck, because we happened to approach the work from such a similar point.  Our mechanisms could have been made in the same factory.  I have a lot of fear and she does, too.  We had major fear working.  We would have a day that wasn't so great, but the next day was going to be fine.  It's like watching an athlete over the course of a long season, where you have a game where you really don't come through.  Certain athletes never have two bad games in a row.  Something clicks in, where you just don't dare, and that really helped us."  Even today, with a solid acting record, that fear hasn't gone away for Martinez.  "I don't think it ever will; it's hard to tell."

    Such a chronic, low-grade fear of failure keeps Martinez on his perfectionist acting toes, constantly honing his craft -- and also accounts for the caution that tempers his optimism about his entree to Port Charles.  "There are all kinds of reasons it should be treated with caution.  I'm not who I was.  It's not the same character (as Cruz),"   however, the fact that Martinez bears a resemblance to Asher Brauner, the actor who originated the role of Roy in 1978, definitely helped smooth the transition.   "There was a guy in the studio last week...the person said to me, 'It's good to have you back.  I really loved that storyline and I was so sorry when you got killed off.'  He was totally flat out buying that it was me.  I thought that was pretty cool."

    In making his return to daytime, Martinez not only had to overcome his own doubts but also doubts from those closest to him.  "I got some advice from people who are pretty important to me who said I shouldn't be doing this.  But, I think a lot of it is not understanding the difference between this show and that show.  You know, what are you going to compare General Hospital to?  I don't think it is a bad thing to be seen regularly and to be seen doing good work.  I look at that show and I can't remember turning on an episode of General Hospital and not feeling, 'Wow, I wouldn't mind being there right now.'  As I am sitting home in my garage looking at my TV, it's like, 'I guess it's better than what I am doing now.'  Leslie feels really strongly that this is a smart thing to do.  It's crazy to apply the same criteria to different people's careers."

    With his fears and doubts in check, Martinez concludes with confidence, "I feel pretty good about it, that it will work out OK.  The show's awfully good.  It's amazing how easy it's been to do the work.  We don't take the time to rehearse like we used to on Santa Barbara, it's a whole different machinery...it's like click click click.   Show up, get in gear, get out there, and bang, out the door.  That was a little bit of a surprise," he admits.  "The words though, they're so actable.  All these people around you are so good.  It definitely helps not to feel like you're scrambling to find a way to get everything to work when it all works the first time you try it.

    "I'm not going to change the nature of the show.  I'm not going to be some revolutionary event.   Hopefully, I'll fit in well - and, it will work."

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