By any standard, Danny Pino has made it. Married to his childhood sweetheart, he lives in Hollywood, where he plays Scotty Valens on CBS’ Sunday drama, “Cold Case” (which airs this week on Thursday).
So, with the money, fame and a stable life, one would expect perks. And he gets them — until he visits home, where mom still makes him do chores.
“Everybody had their things they had to do,” he says. “I have to wash the dishes. I am so programmed, she doesn’t even have to tell me anymore. I have taken enough sandals to the head to know it’s time to take out the garbage.”
Pino, 29, is the second-eldest of five brothers. “My mom is a stud,” he says. “She really instilled a lot of great principles. She really is a great lady.”
His mother, who has been teaching high school social studies for 32 years, and his father, an investment consultant, ran a tight ship. Both parents are Cuban migrs who came here with nothing and worked hard.
Pino, who was born here, is fluent in Spanish and English, and made his stage debut in sixth grade. It was in “Tracers of the Lost Parts of Speech,” a musical at Rockway Elementary School in Miami. “There were dancing verbs and nouns and pronouns running around me, and I was the crazy professor who had lost his glasses,” he says. “I was a silver-haired sixth grader.”
Much as he enjoyed this, Pino’s aspirations ran toward the traditional. “I wanted to be everything,” he says. “I wanted to be a ballplayer, a Coast Guard, a lawyer.”
As a child, he played baseball, football and swam, eventually working as a lifeguard. He loved the warm water of the Atlantic Ocean in Miami, and finds the Pacific Ocean, even in Southern California, frigid.
Also as a child, he met Lily. They went through junior and senior high school and college together. Now married for 1 1/2 years, they live in Los Angeles.
Before he came west, however, there was a detour in Manhattan. Pino initially considered law as a profession. Though he had earned an undergraduate scholarship in drama, he was taking prelaw classes at Florida International University in Miami. “It was two minutes from my house,” he says. “And I still had to do the dishes.”
While studying prelaw, he wrote a one-man play and performed it. The pull of the stage was becoming too strong to ignore, and he knew he had to broach the subject with his father.
“My dad was not excited about me becoming an actor,” Pino recalls. “My mom was always supportive of whatever I wanted to do. My dad is a little more difficult to sway.”
After earning a master’s in fine arts, Pino then earned impressive stage credits. He worked with top choreographer and director Susan Stroman at Lincoln Center in “Thou Shall Not.” He worked in the New York Shakespeare Festival’s “Measure for Measure.” Most recently, he was on the London stage with Madonna in “Up for Grabs.”
Within a year of graduation, Pino headed west and landed a part in the TV series “Men, Women & Dogs,” then had a recurring role on “The Shield” as Armadillo Quintero. It was while there that a wonderful role came his way, that of Desi Arnaz in “Lucy” earlier this year.
With only the slightest prodding, Pino lets loose with a perfect Ricky Ricardo laugh, then handily switches gears and talks about cops trying to solve cold cases.
“I have had a lot of luck of being with the right actors and having them give me the right advice,” Pino says. “When a teacher tells you, it is theory. When an actor tells you and you admire their work, then all of a sudden, so many doors are open for you.”
