Adam
Garcia
Bootmen
Interview by Paul Fischer
Adam Garcia might indeed be touted as Australia's next best thing, but in his StarTalk with Paul Fischer, Adam remained philosophical about his new found success and wary at what stardom may bring. "I find 'celebrityism' a bit of an obscure concept; idolising people who appear on film is a bit silly, really when you think about it. 'Ah, he speaks, therefore he's a hero'. People do more important jobs than acting in film that should be recognised, but for some reason it's big money, so people are elevated in status. If I was a bus driver, I'm sure you wouldn't be interviewing me. So the loss of anonymity does frighten me if it happens." Garcia has come a long way since his tap dancing days. Now, at a mature 27, the young actor has much to think about, such as his recent stint in which he performed in the Olympics with his Bootmen cast. "Dein [Perry, director and choreographer of Bootmen] had been asked to do something with the opening ceremony, and the seven of us pitched in," Garcia explains from his New York hotel." It's the biggest buzz to be a part of the opening ceremony but terrifying - 1.4 billion people saw it."
Garcia is a dancer
by trade. Initially studying science at Sydney University, Garcia lasted six months.
"I played a lot of pool and went to the engineering bar where my brother was studying
engineering," he recalls. "I was a real competent student, which is why I only
lasted those 6 months in favour of a tap dancing career." That 'career' began
when the young dancer "was invited to do a tap dancing show by some friends of
mine who I'd been working with for several years." While many of Garcia's mates
were out aspiring to be firemen or cops, Adam wanted to dance, not exactly 'manly',
but Garcia smiles and says that nobody seemed to care, "because it was such a
novelty for everyone. I think when kids are really young and you say: I dance
and someone else goes: I fly model aeroplanes, they'll go, cool, and off they
go and play." Garcia 
attended
dance class and was the only guy in a class of some 60 girls. Ah, those were the
days! "Yeah, it was a hard life. You eventually get used to looking at girls picking
their leotards out of their bums and that sort of stuff."
Adam made his mark as a tap dancer in the acclaimed Aussie stage show, Soft Shoe Shuffle. "Shuffle ended up being quite a big success and was invited to play in London on the West End, so after we played there, I wanted to stay and become the backpacker. I ended up getting an agent and another job." That other 'job' was a small, but pivotal role, in the smash hit revival of Grease. Garcia stayed with the show before deciding that musicals were boring. "They have a habit of being a little vacant and unchallenging after a little while." After proving himself by appearing in such dramatic plays as Birdy, Garcia was lured back to the musical theatre and the role that would change his life: Tony in the stage version of Saturday Night Fever. "It was my first chance to do a lead and I jumped at it." Luckily the stage version was very different from the groundbreaking film from which it was based, "in that the audience has been sanitised. I mean the film was pretty hard and gritty - double rape scenes, suicides, drugs, swearing, the whole bit. So they changed it a lot for the musical and sanitised it." Garcia remained with the show for almost a year and became an overnight sensation. But he became exhausted and quit before the year's run ended. "I did eight shows a week and, whenever I had time off, I just wanted to stay home. The producers were determined to have me do a year. And my body wouldn't have held out."
Garcia returns to his tap dancing roots in the semi-biographical Bootmen. "It's an Australian tap dancing movie. How the hell did we come up with that I ask myself?" How indeed one retorts. "It's sort of a bastardisation of Dein Perry's life story. He worked in the small Aussie town, Newcastle, in the steelworks, as a fitter and turner, and he got sick of that and wanted to be a tap dancer, because he'd always done that since he was little. When I first met him he was broke and living in a Valiant, eating baked beans out of a tin, and teaching tap-dancing. Now's he's a huge Australian choreographer. So he did a movie about his life to make some more cash out of it. It's sort of like a Full Monty thing but without the nudity," Garcia adds laughingly.
Although it hit
the big screen first, Garcia went from Bootmen to the $40m budgeted Coyote
Ugly. It was a big jump, and Garcia recalls how he was struck by the money
spent on a big production. It was, he says, something of a humbling 
experience.
"I was certainly 'humbled' by the 18-meter trailer they gave me, versus the box
I had on Bootmen. They spend an awful lot of money on I-don't-know-what
in Hollywood movies; I certainly didn't get any of it. But they sure do love spending
money." The actor loved the idea of playing an Australian character in his first
Hollywood film, which came about by accident. "The character was originally American
but they heard my sweet voice and thought: Hey, novelty accent, excellent,
just go with it." Garcia did go with it, perhaps a bit too much in the
beginning, "judging by the first couple days during which nobody could understand
a word I said, especially having come straight off Bootmen. So they had
to go back and reshoot stuff, because they kept on asking: What the hell are you
saying? I had to tone down my Aussie accent so that the director could understand
if I was saying the correct lines or not."
Next up, is another big Hollywood film. "I'm doing Drew Barrymore's next film, Driving in Cars with Boys, which Penny Marshall is directing. It's the true story of a woman called Beverly D'Onofrio who has a child at age 16, which obviously changes her life. She ends up having a bad marriage and bad break up from her family. I play the son when he's grown up and there's a very close relationship between him and his mother." It is hard to believe: Drew Barrymore as Garcia's mum? "Yeah, she's a year younger than me and playing me mum. Ahhh, the art and illusion of Hollywood." What is not illusory is that Adam Garcia is the next hot young Aussie, and life, he admits, is sweet indeed.
Photos by Philip Le Masurier © Fox Searchlight. Article Copyright © 2000 Paul Fischer. All rights reserved.