Never Talk to Strangers, 1995

Additional Captures

Director: Peter Hall

Writers: Lewis A. Green and Jordon Rush

Other Actors: Rebecca DeMornay

Antonio plays a Puerto Rican surveillance expert who travels to New York (Toronto really -- even the opening skyline shot is Toronto) to find his missing cousin. He becomes involved with his cousin's former lover -- a criminal psychologist with some dark secrets of her own. Never Talk to Strangers was widely criticized for its stunningly stupid ending. But, this movie is really about sex: sex on the floor, sex hanging from a wire cage, sex in bed. Rebecca DeMornay admits, "It is very easy to get erotic with Antonio." She also says, "Antonio takes himself a lot less seriously than a lot of American actors. It's not that he's unaware that he's an attractive man -- he's not stupid -- but he doesn't place any great importance on it."

Antonio's image as a Latin lover got even stronger as he played the tatooed, pig-tailed, leather-jacketed, motorcycle-riding, sensitive hunk named Tony.

Never Talk to Strangers is one of five of his films released in 1995. That's about four too many as far as the critics were concerned. "I hated that movie (Never Talk to Stangers)," says Antonio, "and the other day I saw it on TV in a hotel. I don't know who edited it, but it wasn't so bad as I thought. First I watched it a bit reluctantly, but then I was surprised, I realized that it wasn't too bad. But, it's true, I shouldn't have made those movies, not because of their quality, but because of the intensity of your work, because you can't be on screen with five movies at the same time. The critics see the movies then one after another, and I remember that, when this one was released, the critic for the L.A. Times told me: 'I'm not going to judge if it's good or not. It's just too much.'"

Related Information

A love scene lasting about 10 seconds was cut from the video in the United States (although it is available in Canada). The scene is of Tony and Sarah making love in bed, intercut with the two romping in the snow, but there is no sheet covering them on the bed. A naked Tony is on top of Sarah who has her legs wrapped around him and the lovemaking is quite realisitc -- too realisitc, it seems, for American censors.

Antonio rides a powerful motorcycle in this movie. When he was a teenager Antonio bought a motorcycle and injured himself in two accidents. The first occurred while Antonio was giving a girl a ride home from a party and he lost control of the motorcycle after he hit a hole on a roadway which was under repair. The girl suffered an ankle injury and Antonio received a bone-deep gash on his leg. The second accident occured when Antonio and a friend took the motorcycle to an industrial complex they thought was deserted and pushed the speed up to 160 kilometers an hour. Just then a truck backed out of a bay right into their path and Antonio had to spin the motorcycle out of control to avoid a collision. He and his friend wound up hurtling face-first into a metal barrier. The impact was so violent that Antonio's shoes were knocked off and he limped home barefoot and bleeding everywhere, and was unable to move for three or four days.