It wasn’t that Pepe Serna couldn’t get his foot in the door in Hollywood, more the opposite: The veteran character actor stepped off a bus from Texas in 1969, and into his first acting role, and never really stopped.
And many of the pictures he worked on were huge: “The Jerk” with Steve Martin, “Silverado” with Kevin Costner, “The Rookie” with Clint Eastwood, and “American Me” with Edward James Olmos, to name a handful of the 400-plus roles he’s had during four decades on screen.
The parts, though? Tiny, even if the impression Serna left on screen was often powerful. Just ask anyone who’s seen “Scarface” if they remember the scene where Al Pacino’s pal gets handcuffed in the shower.
They remember that guy; they remember Serna even if they never knew his name.
Still, Serna always knew there was more he could give, if only offered the chance.
“I always said, ‘I don’t care if it takes me until 70 to make it,’” Serna told us in 2006 when we first stopped by his Balboa Island home to talk about his already long and fruitful career as one of those prolific Hollywood character actors whose face shows up everywhere but whose name always just escapes you.
“If somebody is smart, they’ll hire me,” he said then. “Because my best work is ahead of me.”
Fast forward. Serna is 70. And that somebody, director Dave Boyle, not only hired him for the indie thriller “Man From Reno” but the part – Serna’s first leading role – was written specifically for him.
“I feel like it’s my best part I’ve ever done, and the best movie I’ve ever done,” Serna says of his role as Sheriff Paul Del Moral in “Man From Reno.” which is currently playing at the University Town Center 6 in Irvine.
“It’s like I have that eternal youth thing going on.”
It’s the small twists that often set the course of what is to come.
A day after Serna arrived in Hollywood, in March 1969, he met a beautiful young woman named Diane. Today, 46 years later, they’re still together.
In similar felicitous fashion, a decade or so ago, Dave Boyle, a young director working on his first movie, contacted an agent about one of his clients.
That actor wasn’t available, but the agent also repped Serna, who was in Bulgaria at the time, shooting Brian De Palma’s “Black Dahlia.” The agent saw in the script a different role with potential for Serna.
“My dad was a huge ‘Buckaroo Banzai’ fan,” Boyle says of the 1984 sci-fi comedy in which Serna appeared. “And like the rest of the 7 billion people on this planet, I’d seen ‘Scarface,’ so I said, ‘Sure, let’s do it.’
“We just kind of instantly hit it off,” Boyle says of working with Serna on the set of “Big Dreams Little Tokyo.”
“I was a scared, young director. But he was supportive, and made things easy for me. … I told him, ‘One of these days I’m going to write a lead role for you.’
Sheriff Paul Del Moral was originally written for Serna as part of a horror-mystery script that never made it out of development, Boyle says. The idea for “Man From Reno” is more subtle: Famous Japanese mystery writer meets mysterious man from Reno; he disappears and she, with help from Sheriff Del Moral – after Boyle decided to graft the character into this new idea – are drawn into the mystery.
“I really loved the character. And I loved imagining Pepe playing this guy with the gravelly gravitas, instead of the wild and crazy guy he usually plays in the movies,” Boyle says.
“I really loved the idea of seeing him kind of ride into the movie like a cowboy and be the rock that the audience holds onto for this crazy story.”
Serna, who did a second movie with Boyle while waiting for “Man From Reno” to be made, says one of the things he loved about the part was how, unlike many of the parts he’s had, it wasn’t linked to any ethnicity.
“If it was a studio film, well, they would never do a studio film that’s half Japanese (language). And then they’d never put a Mexican American as the American lead,” says Serna, who was born and raised in Corpus Christi, Texas. “It wouldn’t make any sense to them.
“But that’s one of the things that I really, really love about the movie. It allowed me to just be the American guy that I am.
“The fact that I’m Mexican American has nothing to do with anything, other than that I pronounce all of the Spanish names correctly.”
Screened last year at film festivals around the country, “Man From Reno” earned a handful of honors, including best dramatic feature at the Los Angeles Film Festival. It also was nominated at the Independent Spirit Awards in February for the John Cassavetes Award, given to the best movies made for less than $500,000.
Serna says he spent the last year, before the wider release of “Man From Reno,” working on seven new film projects. In a couple, he says, he’s again the leading man. Most are low-budget indies. But that’s fine by Serna, who says he’s always loved working with new filmmakers and young performers.
He’s also working on a documentary about his life called “Life Is Art.” It explores his film and TV roles, and his many years of teaching improvisation classes to kids and adults. Improv, he says, is a way to help people “connect, communicate and collaborate.”
Boyle says he couldn’t be happier how the film, and the part for Serna, turned out.
“It was enormously satisfying,” he says. “My hope was that if people saw (Pepe) in this role they would rethink the kind of roles he was getting offered.”
For Serna, the attention and strong reviews that “Man From Reno” and his leading role have brought him are energizing.
“I feel like I just got off the bus. … It’s so much fun.”
But he’s always had that attitude.
“The things I could have done had Hollywood been more open? I don’t dwell on coulda-woulda-shoulda. Because, hey, I’ve had a great career.”
And it’s not over.
