Benjamin Bratt gets dramatic (in a beard)
Benjamin Bratt is used to getting attention when he happens to take his shirt off in films like The Next Best Thing or Miss Congeniality. These days, however, the actor is focusing on a pair of dramatic roles that are showing he is much more than a pretty face. On his A&E series The Cleaner, Bratt plays William Banks, a former addict who has devoted his life to helping those unfortunate people who have succumbed to the power of addiction and he works effortlessly to helm them get ’clean.’ In the new film La Mission, Bratt is a less understanding man in a film that happened to be written and directed by his brother, Peter Bratt. Having wow’d audiences at Sundance, La Mission will be at LA’s Outfest this week and will also be screened at the NY Latino Film Festival later this month. Edge’s Jim Halterman talked to Bratt during a Cleaner press call and was able to ask about the controversial role in the film.
Bratt said that with these two projects he did not have a lot of time to jump from one role to the next. "What’s interesting," he said, "is I went from shooting the pilot [of The Cleaner] directly into pre-production on this film that I co-produced with my brother, La Mission, which is about the Mission district in my hometown, San Francisco, and a neighborhood that I’m quite devoted to, as is my family. Then as soon as that film was wrapped, literally we wrapped on Sunday and I was at work the next day on what was meant to be the first season of The Cleaner so there wasn’t much breathing space in between." He added with his wry sense of humor, "Thankfully, both characters required a beard."
Playing devoted fathers
While the time factor between roles was minimal, the roles weren’t completely different, the actor said. "My job as an actor is to render the most accurate, most complex portrayal of whatever is written on the page," he explained. "Thankfully, in both cases, there are elements to each character’s respective qualities, however dramatic the differences, that I could relate to. Both are fathers, both come from the school of hard knocks, and yet both are extremely and utterly devoted to their respective families. That’s how I am in real life. As much as I love work, as much as I love the responsibilities I have as producer and as an actor on The Cleaner, my number one priority is my family. That push-pull that exists with the lead character of William Banks succeeding at work while failing at home? I understand it clearly and it has resonance for me."
La Mission has also been picking up momentum with audiences on the festival circuit, Bratt said. "We premiered at the Sundance Film Festival this January and then we went on to open the San Francisco International Film Festival to a sold out crowd at the Castro Theater. It’s played at the Seattle International Film Festival and will open on July 9th at LA Outfest, which is the largest gay film festival in the country. Then, we follow that up with the opening night at the Latino Film Festival on July 28th. So it’s been a very busy festival circuit schedule going and we’re very encouraged by the response we’ve been getting for something that really amounts to a small story that has a global resonance."
"At the center of our story," the actor explained about his La Mission role, "is a man who is a reformed bad boy who is into low rider cars and has now become a bus driver and he finds out that his 18-yr old son, his pride and joy, is gay and has a violent response to it. It’s not just a little ironic that this occurs in one of the most progressive, liberal areas in the country and yet those social taboos are still in place in communities of color, particular the Latino culture and the African American communities."
Bratt is aware that his film role is going to stir up some audience members and that is fine by him. "I think the response to the ultimate message of tolerance and acceptance is resonating with everyone whether you’re gay, straight, white, black, brown, it doesn’t matter. What we’re finding is across genders, orientations, cultures, age, the film is ultimately about family and that’s what people are responding to. And what we’ve noticed happen is there has been a very lively debate after the film is played to sold out houses everywhere and that dialogue is ultimately healing so we’ve been very gratified by it."
