By Jae-Ha Kim
Chicago Sun-Times
January 1, 1987
If he had listened to his parents, Jimmy Smits would be teaching astronomy to Brooklyn high school students. Instead, Smits is earning his income as a lawyer.
Smits, 31, appears as Victor Sifuentes, one of the attorneys on “L.A. Law.” NBC’s hit series about a fictional Los Angeles law firm airs at 9 p.m. Thursdays on WMAQ-Channel 5.
Smits said he likes his character because he’s a professional who happens to be a minority, not vice versa. Sifuentes, a hard-driven Hispanic associate, didn’t go to all the right schools or clubs. He wears a diamond stud earring and has no misgivings about handling pro bono cases. Smits is hoping that his character will be a good role model for young people, especially Latinos.
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I was the first in my family to go to college in the United States, so my parents expected a lot from me,” Smits said in a phone interview from his dressing room in Burbank, Calif. Smits’ parents originally are from Puerto Rico and the South American nation of Suriname, formerly Dutch Guiana, and they wanted their firstborn son to have a stable career. They didn’t consider acting to be a viable means of earning a steady income.
Nonetheless, Smits said he found himself taking speech-pathology seminars while a student at Brooklyn College. These classes reminded him of the acting courses he had taken and enjoyed in high school. It wasn’t long before he registered for theater classes.
“When I first enrolled in college, I had planned on becoming a teacher to satisfy my mom and dad’s dreams of having some type of professional in the family,” Smits said. “But 10 years down the road, I didn’t want to be thinking, `I could’ve, should’ve, would’ve. It was hard for my parents to understand in the beginning. They asked the same question that every parent asks when their kids are venturing into questionable occupations: `What are you going to fall back on?’ ”
To appease his parents, Smits enrolled at Cornell University and earned his master’s degree in fine arts in 1982. “That kind of softened things for them,” he said. “They said, `Oh, well, a graduate degree. . . But can you teach after that if acting doesn’t work out?’ Luckily, I started working Off-Broadway pretty soon after I graduated, so they were relieved.”
They were pleased that he actually could pay his bills by acting on stage. But for the Smits family, true success meant appearing on television. “I was spending years doing Shakespeare,” Smits said, laughing. “And they’d say, `You know, you do those plays where you talk funny. Why don’t you do a Pepsodent commercial?’ First of all, I wouldn’t get cast for a toothpaste commercial. But my family is not from a theatrical background, so to them, the small tube is what entertainment is all about.”
One of Smits’ undergraduate professors told him that if he wanted to move out to Los Angeles, he probably could find work. At 6 feet 3 inches and 196 pounds, Smits would have had little problem getting cast as a gang member in one of the low-budget warrior films that were being mass-produced in the late 1970s. But deciding that he didn’t want to get stereotyped as the Hispanic heavy, Smits chose to stay in New York and hone his craft in theater.
“It just seems that there’s so much of this `here today, gone tomorrow’ thing in show business,” Smits said. “I really wanted to have a lifelong career in this business. So that, along with my parents, is what opted me to go to graduate school. I wanted to stretch out and do things that I might not get the chance to do in the professional arena. Let’s face it: There aren’t too many Hispanic Romeos onstage.”
But when he began seeing former classmates on the big screen, Smits said, he had some doubts as to whether he had made the right choice. His decision to wait paid off in 1984, when he got cast as Don Johnson’s first partner in the pilot of “Miami Vice.” Though his character was blown up 20 minutes into the program, his role won him some recognition. He popped up in other television series, such as “Spenser: For Hire,” before landing a co-starring role as a drug dealer in “Running Scared,” the Billy Crystal-Gregory Hines film shot in Chicago.
“I remember those cold Chicago days when we had to shoot and reshoot the chase scenes on the L,” he said. “It was cold, but fun. I really enjoyed my stay in Chicago at lot. It’s a real city with very real people.
“In L.A., the weather is beautiful and there are lots of pretty girls, but it’s not very personal. It’s a very car-oriented town. Everybody drives. When I was in Chicago, I’d take the bus everywhere and just see the neighborhoods.”
Although Smits, who has a five-year contract with “L.A. Law,” earns enough money to live in luxury, his new Los Angeles home is spartan. “My accountant keeps telling me that the novelty of having an unfurnished house has worn off and that I should buy some furniture,” Smits said, laughing. “But I guess that’s a part of me that’s rebelling being out here. It’s almost not real here. Over Thanksgiving, I went back to New York and just went to 34th Street and walked to be near people. It was great.”
Mingling with the common folk isn’t as easy as it used to be. People approach him in restaurants, at shopping centers, on the street, and via the U.S. mail. Although he said he answers all the letters he receives and politely chats with well-wishers, Smits admitted that he’s not totally comfortable in his role as a celebrity.
“(The people) who approach me always mean well,” Smits said. “But sometimes their nervousness makes me feel awkward. And there’s no way I can be what they expect me to be, so that’s a little strange, too.”
Given the lack of good roles available to Hispanics, or actors in general for that matter, Smits said he’s grateful to be working on a show where a large cast and crew work harmoniously to produce a high-quality show.
“I think that television is beginning to reflect the current change of society’s attitude toward minorities,” Smits said. “Not all Latinos are gang members or drug pushers, and television is beginning to come around and present us in another light. Hopefully, my character won’t be one of the few minority role models on television.”
