Seeking ‘Glory’ in the Ring

When he went to see Oscar de la Hoya fight at Madison Square Garden last month, Jimmy Smits admitted he was more animated than he’s ever been at a boxing match.

“I’m saying, ‘His right hand is down, you got to jab, you got to jab!’ ” the actor recalled recently with a smile, over a lunch of chicken noodle soup and bottled water in a Manhattan hotel. “We were fairly close, and a couple of people turned around. They were all boxing people, including heavyweight champion Lennox Lewis, and they’re saying like, ‘What’s up?’ ”

Smits’ enthusiasm is understandable, given his starring role in “Price of Glory,” a boxing movie that opens Friday. Smits, along with other cast members, did some boxing training, because “it would have been bogus for me to pretend.” So when he saw his old friend De la Hoya in the ring last month, Smits went beyond what he calls his usual “awe” of the sport to indulge a little of his newfound expertise.

While that expertise figures prominently in “Price of Glory,” some of his fans may be surprised, maybe even initially disappointed, at the part he plays. This is, after all, our own Det. Bobby Simone, late of TV’s “NYPD Blue,” the romantic hunk whose sensitive persona offset partner Andy Sipowicz’s perpetual crankiness.

“Price of Glory” is the first of Smits’ post-”Blue” projects to be released. Smits plays Arturo Ortega, a onetime title contender whose hopes and dreams now center on his three sons.

Obsessed with creating a champion boxer, Ortega not only trains but manipulates his boys (the oldest of whom is played by ex-”Homicide” cop and former Golden Gloves boxer Jon Seda) toward the hoped-for title. Ortega is certainly not a villain, but he’s no Bobby Simone, either. Nor, in fact, is he like the fiery lawyer Victor Sifuentes, the role on “L.A. Law” that launched Smits in 1986 as TV’s first Latino sex symbol.

There was, Smits knew, a certain irony in the fact that Ortega fails to recognize the importance of education for his sons, while “I’m a big one for going to talk to kids about going to school.” Smits is a co-founder of the National Hispanic Foundation for the Arts, a Washington-based group that, he explained, “provides graduate scholarships for people who have already demonstrated interest in the arts” and promotes a greater Latino presence in the film and TV industries.

The Early Years Weren’t Easy

Born in 1955 in Manhattan of a Puerto Rican mother and a father from Suriname (the onetime Dutch Guiana; his surname is of Dutch origin), Smits grew up largely in Brooklyn.

To satisfy his parents, Smits pursued an education degree at Brooklyn College, though he went on to get a master’s in theater arts at Cornell University.

It wasn’t entirely smooth sailing during the early years. At 19, he was a father. His marriage ended in divorce, and his mother helped raise Taina, now a teacher, and Joaquin, a high school junior, in Brooklyn.

New York City was his home base after Cornell, and while he wasn’t an immediate star, “I was lucky, because there hasn’t been a lot of unemployed time--just a little bit, where I drove a cab,” Smits said. “But I made a living--not much of a living. But doing theater and soap operas, that would get you through the month.”

His break came after he was sent the pilot script for “L.A. Law.”

An off-the-cuff reading for NBC executives “went awful,” he recalled. But a friend in L.A. urged him to fly out to meet series co-creator Steven Bochco, and Smits took the $99 bargain flight to the West Coast: “I actually wound up getting an appointment with Bochco, and I was so prepared.”

He was on the show for five years, beginning in 1986, earning an Emmy along the way. And he was the first actor considered by Bochco for the co-starring role on “NYPD Blue” that went to David Caruso after Smits declined the part. Pursuing a movie career with mixed results, Smits was ready to join the precinct when Bochco approached him in 1993, following the temperamental Caruso’s departure after a single season.

“He came into a tumultuous situation,” said Bochco, in a phone interview from the set of “NYPD Blue.”

“He was extraordinary. He was elegant and professional, he bonded with Dennis in a heartbeat, he just made it so easy for people, and he never for a moment exposed his own anxiety, which must have been significant.”

‘I Miss Those Guys a Whole Lot’

For his part, Smits said he “loved doing that show. I miss those guys a whole lot. I don’t miss the grind and rigors of episodic TV. . . .

“After I left ‘Blue,’ three days later I was in a theater in L.A. at a workshop on Shakespeare that Sir Peter Hall was doing, because I needed it for my soul.”

As for returning to the stage in New York, “it almost happened this year, but I backed out” of the unnamed play. But, he said, “I’ve got a lot of friends in the New York Public Theatre, and we’ve been talking about this summer,” perhaps something to follow up on his Shakespeare workshop.

Revitalizing his movie career may depend in part on the reception for “Price of Glory.” And there’s the question, too, of whether an actor identified as Latino, even one of Smits’ proven broad-based appeal, can make the transition to roles that are ethnically “neutral.”

“That’s not really up to me. It’s up to the powers that do the casting,” said Smits, who noted, however, that in one upcoming film, “Bless the Child,” he plays an FBI investigator with the non-ethnic name of “John Decker.”

But then, it’s an unpredictable business, a fact that Smits seems to take in stride. “When I left graduate school, I said to myself, whether I get a chance to do all the things I want, at least I know I’m proficient in my craft. So I knew I would make a living.”