It’s Getting ‘Hot’ In Here
There is a little bit of everything on Lorenzo Lamas‘ resume. Feature films? Check. Big budget action dramas? Check. Directing? Check. Reality show? Check. The only thing missing was daytime, until he joined THE BOLD AND THE BEAUTIFUL last February as noble firefighter Hector Ramirez.
“I was ready for another run of drama,” he explains. “I had been doing so many action movies, where the writing wasn’t as good as it could have been because they wanted to get the shot of the helicopter landing before the sunset. Sometimes the scripts took a backseat to the action. It is so refreshing to be on a show where the development of the characters is all that’s important.”
It hasn’t taken long to find out what makes Hector tick. “I like the way he is developing,” muses Lamas. “It is more interesting because of all the history now coming out between him and Samantha. Sydney (Penny, Samantha) is a wonderful actress and we are going to do some good work here. The story is so wonderful — this unrequited love and the evil mother breaking them up when they were kids. It’s really rich. When you are an actor and you get a part, you try to do the backstory. Where did the character come from? How did he grow up? What was he like as a teenager? How does he feel about life? It’s great because the show is giving me all of that background and so much to work with.”
The chance to be closer to his family also drew Lamas to B&B. “It is so great to go home at night,” he smiles. “It is the first time in years. I have traveled all over the world and done TV series everywhere — Bulgaria, Prague, the Czech Republic, Vancouver — and it’s always very difficult when you are away from your family because of work.”
Lamas, who has been divorced four times, prefers not to speak about his personal life but will say he tries to be the best dad he can be to his six kids. “I have three big ones and three little ones,” he says. “I do the best I can. The relationship that Hector has with Caitlin is very much the relationship I have in real life with my daughter Shayne. I try to be [like Hector].”
Hector wouldn’t have much in common with Lamas’ first soap character. He was 21 years old when he landed the role of playboy Lance Cumson on FALCON CREST, and he stayed there for the nighttime soap’s entire run (1981-’90). “That was a decade of television for me,” he marvels. “It was most of my 20s. Working with Jane Wyman (Angela) is something that I will never forget. She is a consummate professional. She set the tone for every other actor who did that show. After nine seasons she never made a fuss about a bigger trailer. She stayed in the same little 16 by 16 room that we all did and never complained. Jane was such a professional and such a class act. She was like a grandmother to me.”
Wyman wasn’t afraid to scold her on-screen grandson. “I remember the first time I came on the set with a new tattoo,” he chuckles. “It was like 1982 or 1983. We had come back from the hiatus and we were shooting up in Napa. She saw this tattoo at a distance and yelled, ‘Lorenzo Lamas, you get over here!’ I walked over there and she said, ‘What the hell have you done to yourself?’ I said, ‘I got a tattoo.’ She looked at me, shook her finger at my nose and said, ‘You are an actor, young man. You are not a person who goes and gets tattoos. You better learn from that!’ Back in the day, nobody had tattoos [on shows] but ex-cons and pirates. I didn’t learn much from that lesson because I went out and got more and more. Now they have to cover them up [on B&B].”
Tattoos were obviously a topic of discussion on Lamas’ previous project, the campy reality show ARE YOU HOT? THE SEARCH FOR AMERICA’S SEXIEST PEOPLE. “This was a reality show that was as simple as simple could be. It was a guy and a girl standing up there onstage, telling you that they think they are hot. Your job is to tell them why they are not. It was fun, especially in the beginning when you saw these people of all shapes and sizes telling you how hot they think they are. It’s like the first few tryouts for AMERICAN IDOL where those people can’t sing.”
While there was a lot of buzz surrounding the show, it didn’t last past its first season. “I think people enjoyed that show,” adds Lamas. “The problem was, we went to war and the network executives felt that it was inappropriate at that particular time. I can’t disagree with them. It was unfortunate because I think if we were on now, there would be another installment.”
Don’t blame the laser pointer (which Lamas used to point out the contestants’ imperfections) on him. “That was the producer’s idea,” he admits. “But I thought, ‘What the heck? You are doing a show about bathing suits. Why not go all out and be totally superficial?’ I still get a lot of comments about that. Some people couldn’t believe I would sit there with that thing and point out peoples’ flaws. Heck, if you are trying to explain about a certain part of a person’s body, you can’t go up on stage and point at it. So why not use a laser pointer?”
Not that the laser pointer won’t haunt him forever. “The minute I picked that thing up and used it for the first time, I knew that was going to be my signature,” he shrugs. “People will still say, ‘Where is your laser pointer?’ But you know, I am an actor. That is my passion. I did ARE YOU HOT? because it was a way for the industry to see a different side that wasn’t doing action, wasn’t doing karate, wasn’t chasing a fugitive. I was just being me.”
FOREIGN LANGUAGE
Lamas is proud to be playing the first Latino role of his career. “It’s about time,” he declares. “Think about it: a name like Lorenzo Lamas and you’ve never played a Latino character? My father (actor Fernando Lamas) was Argentine. My mother (Arlene Dahl, ex-Lucinda, OLTL) is Norwegian. It’s kind of a weird mix. I am now working on my Spanish.”
Does this mean Hector might start speaking some Spanish on the show? “You never know,” he says. “I just think it’s a smart thing to do. I have done a lot of Latin press. I don’t like to struggle with the language, and I do. The more Spanish I can pick up, the better I am going to come across.”
This article originally appeared in the April 27, 2004
issue of Soap Opera Weekly.
Conversation
All comments are subject to our Community Guidelines. Soap Opera Digest does not endorse the opinions and views shared by our readers in our comment sections. Our comments section is a place where readers can engage in healthy, productive, lively, and respectful discussions. Offensive language, hate speech, personal attacks, and/or defamatory statements are not permitted. Advertising or spam is also prohibited.