"It was too easy," says Quinn, who was 22 at the time. "I hadn't paid my dues. I felt a sense of entitlement, and I was wrong. . . . It's a good thing my career didn't go anywhere then because maybe I wasn't ready."
Truthfully, I was not aware of Quinn's work until "The Tonto Woman" showed up on my doorstep. In his role as the brooding gunslinger Ruben Vega, Quinn looks remarkably like his father, with his broad forehead, long face and prominent nose. (He darkened his fair skin on screen by rubbing Guinness beer on his face.) But the film also shows that he inherited some of his father's talent, without the old-fashioned inclination to overact.
Anthony Quinn, an immigrant carried across the Rio Grande on his grandmother's back, made more than 200 films and had more than a dozen children by several women. The patriarch still casts a long shadow over his son. A life-size portrait of the late actor as Zorba the Greek, his most beloved character, hangs in his son's Sherman Oaks living room. There he is, arms outstretched and poised to take those joyful dance steps, a constant reminder that it's almost impossible to fill the old man's shoes.
"It's like living with the queen of England, are you kidding me?" says Quinn. "My father's larger than life! He's Mexican. He's Irish. He's a god in Greece. You walk into a room and there's nobody else in the room."
At times, directors even invoked his father to set up a scene, Quinn recalled over lunch at a favorite trattoria. The actor stands at the table and puts his foot on the chair, mimicking a director mimicking his father: "Remember when your father did that in 'Viva Zapata'? You know, he turned to talk to Brando in that way and gave him that look. Do that!"
His father was a great role model, but that was ridiculous, Quinn thought. Even as a child it was hard to compete for attention.
"I could be winning the decathlon in high school, which I've won twice," he recalls, "yet, if my dad is in the audience, 'Oh look! It's Anthony Quinn.' And I'm like, 'Hello?' " He raises his hand as if vainly trying to call attention to himself. " 'Kid just got a gold medal. Helloooo? I'm over here.' "
Quinn says his pedigree allows him to play a variety of ethnic roles, like his father. He was "conceived in Morocco during a lull in the filming of 'Lawrence of Arabia.' " His mother, Iolanda Addolori, was an Italian wardrobe assistant who met his father on the set of "Barabbas," the 1962 film made in Italy. Francesco is the eldest of three children born to that marriage, which lasted more than 30 years; the elder Quinn died in 2001, at age 86.
