Newborn Actor Likes Bigger Soapbox

Panamanian lawyer-turned-musician Ruben Blades, who appears in “Mo’ Better Blues,” “The Two Jakes” and “The Lemon Sisters,” swears he’s not abandoning music, just looking for a platform for social comment.

The Harvard graduate and former Panama City banker is far from a Big Screen Adonis of Tom Selleck proportions. He’s less than medium height. His black hair is receding. But he is bright. He is talented. He is ambitious.

Blades’ Afro-Cuban music has led to a dozen record album hits, some going gold, but he’s now moving into a movie career that already includes roles in “The Last Flight,” “Fatal Beauty,” “Crossover Dreams” and “The Milagro Beanfield War.”

Blades is not abandoning music, but he has something to say about social conditions and racial concepts that he feels movies will enable him to project.

“I have a possibility to develop further in films what I have already started in music,” he said. “I write my own material, making myself a protagonist of other people’s stories.

“In films I accept a role as presented by other people and take it elsewhere, a step further. (But) I love the beauty, fullness and immediacy of music. I do not plan to give it up for acting.

“Music is universal. When I perform in concert audiences are integrated, racially and culturally mixed. The response comes from the music regardless of the language of the lyrics. It makes the audience react.”

Blades is aware the transition from music to acting isn’t easy. Sinatra, Presley, Streisand, the Beatles, Sting, Dean Martin, Doris Day and others have made the changeover with varying degrees of success.

And he knows he is further handicapped in Hollywood movies because he is foreign-born.

“People in the film industry find it difficult to trust the responsibility of a role to someone who isn’t an Anglo and at the same time someone they do not perceive as an actor but as a musician,” he said.

“Desi Arnaz was a leading man in TV, a Latino who attracted Anglo support at a time when racism was at its worst in the 1950s. Here was a Latino married to a beautiful Anglo. Nobody complained that Desi was a foreigner.

“Desi as a Latino wasn’t a thief, a dope dealer or a welfare chiseler. Since Desi, there hasn’t been a Latino figure accepted in TV or films as a leading man.

“I’ve been doing comedy in films, which is a strong medium for making social comment. Chaplin and others have used it.”

Blades, who moved from New York to Hollywood four years ago, shuns music in his movies. He says roles that include music are usually lightweight.

“I’ve turned down parts that would require me to sing,” he said. “I want to create a different image. I hope to play parts with no ethnic implications. A man is a man. An actor should be able to play a role without racial identification.”