Hollister resident continues a life time of acting
For more than 50 years Hollister resident Cesar Flores has been
acting on TV, in movies and theater. He has shared stage and screen
with such notable actors as Sean Penn, Nick Nolte, and Cheech
Marin, among others.
Hollister resident continues a life time of acting
For more than 50 years Hollister resident Cesar Flores has been acting on TV, in movies and theater. He has shared stage and screen with such notable actors as Sean Penn, Nick Nolte, and Cheech Marin, among others.
Yet it is Flores’ years of service with El Teatro Campesino in San Juan Bautista that he has truly enjoyed.
Most recently Flores acted in an independent film that won critical acclaim at the Los Angeles Film Festival and recently got picked up for larger distribution.
The film, “August Evening,” is a story about an undocumented worked and his widowed daughter-in-law who deal with a tragedy. First-time director, Chris Eska, shot the film in Spanish.
The film was shot on location in San Antonio, where Flores 60 years earlier got one of his first tastes of life on the stage.
“My parents were migrant workers and we’d moved to Texas from Minnesota,” Flores said. “In school, my class was up on stage singing a song at Christmas and I loved it.”
The sixty-something-year-old actor has deep-set passionate eyes that tell his story. His tone is laid-back and relaxed. He has a tattoo on his right arm and wears turquoise jewelry.
Flores didn’t take to the stage again for several years.
He dropped out of high school to join the Air Force and later went back to get his degree. It was when he went back to high school that he started taking some drama classes.
He went to college and became an electrical mechanical designer, but he still had the acting bug, so he took some night classes in Costa Mesa.
“It was drama and my first night in that class, it just clicked,” Flores said. “I was just blown away. That summer I acted in my first musical and from there it just went on.”
Flores began doing a lot of plays during the late ’60s.
It was during that time that Flores met director Bill Perkins who asked Flores if he knew Luis Valdez.
“He introduced me to El Teatro Campesino and I was blown away,” Flores said. “I developed an on [again] off [again] love affair with it and now Chicano theater is a new genre of theater.”
There was always a 9 to 5 job to bring in a paycheck, but there was always the acting on top of it.
Flores’ son, Tajin, 31, has fond memories of growing up with his father and the appreciation that was instilled in him for the arts thanks to his dad.
“My dad’s always been a character,” Tajin said. “And theater was always kind of second nature. He had to work, but theater was always a passion.”
These days when Flores isn’t busy acting, he’s active in the classroom, trying to motivate younger people to get involved in acting as well.
Neither of Flores’ two children act today, but were exposed to it as children.
“We didn’t know any different,” Tajin said. “Dad was always on stage and that was normal. Though now that I think about it, my dad’s passion for acting definitely instilled me with an appreciation for the arts in general – not just theater, but also art, music and poetry.”
Kids today are very creative, but they need an outlet, Flores said.
“You use a lot of theater techniques in the classroom,” Flores said. “Acting changes your life. It makes you look at yourself and you totally lose touch with reality for a moment. It allows for personal growth and you have to be disciplined, I’ve taught myself a lot of self-discipline.”
Over the years Flores has had to play his share of stereotypical roles, from the drug lord to the gang leader, but he understands that some roles you take for the paycheck and others you can be selective about.
“They’re just roles you play,” Flores said. “People need to understand that the stuff they see on TV isn’t real.”
His favorite role of all the ones he’s done is still the one he most often plays with El Teatro, that of the wise elder; the father figure or the uncle or the old drunk with a message for the youth.
“August Evening” has been picked up for a 10-city release and locally the film will show in Salinas. Times and locations were not available at press time.
