BOWLING GREEN - He's cute. (Make that "handsome.")
He's 4-feet, 11.5 inches. ("Just say 5 feet.")
And fresh from the bathroom scale, brown-haired, brown-eyed, 12-year-old Anthony De La Torre weighs in at a trim 97 pounds. ("Put down 95. That sounds better.")
Anthony, a seventh grader at St. Aloysius School in Bowling Green, was bitten by the acting bug this summer, and with a couple of commercials under his belt - and now a voice role on Nickelodeon's Dora the Explorer series - it's clear he's got the fever bad.
"I just love acting," he says with uncontrolled excitement. "I love being in front of the camera. It's awesome."
His brush with the studio lights began in December when he and his older brother, Nicolas, went to Toledo to audition for the Millie Lewis Actors, Models, and Talent Competition.
His brother had been singing in public for years, and Anthony assumed Nic would go the furthest. Instead, both of them were chosen to go on to a weeklong competition in Orlando, Fla. in June, and there, Anthony cleaned up.
He not only received a number of awards for the monologues and commercials he performed for the judges, but more importantly he got 17 callbacks from agents and managers who wanted to set him up with studio auditions.
He and his mother, Esther Garcia-Tio, have spent nearly three weeks in New York going to auditions, and last week, Anthony filmed two public service announcements about teen abstinence - one in English, the other in Spanish.
Growing up in a home where his Cuban-American parents spoke both languages, he is bilingual - something he included in his resume.
"That was a good thing," Anthony says when asked if that helped his chances of landing the job. "They say there is a big market for Spanish and English."
Ms. Garcia-Tio, a Spanish teacher at Bowling Green High School, said the television commercial was filmed with actors and actresses of varying ethnic groups, but she said the director made it clear he had selected Anthony for his acting ability, not his looks.
"I asked the director which group he was in, and he said they'd leave it up to the viewers to decide," she said.
Anthony's sudden success doesn't surprise St. Aloysius Principal Mary K. Williams, who described him as "charismatic, a charmer."
"He's a very friendly, happy, exuberant type of kid, and he's bilingual," she said.
"He's the youngest in the family and he's just one of those - I don't want to say free spirits, but just a happy child."
Anthony's mother is willing to say free spirit.
"Anthony is an adventurer. He wants to go for everything. He doesn't care," she said. "It's exciting for him and scary for me because I'm his mom and he's still underage, but I don't want to stymie his desires or his future by my fears."
She left early this morning for New York City to accompany Anthony on his latest round of jobs: another public service announcement about abstinence intended to air on Clear Channel radio stations that's being taped today in Manhattan; a recording session tomorrow at Nickelodeon's 42nd Street studio to be the voice of Willie the Whistling Duck, a new character coming to the Dora the Explorer series; and a photo shoot for a print commercial for Del Monte ketchup in Long Island on Thursday.
Anthony already had a paid audition for the popular preschool series starring Dora, an adventurous Latina girl. He also got to meet the actress who provides Dora's voice.
"When I met Dora, I started bowing down to her," he said. "She's 16, from Peru, and she's beautiful. She gave me three hugs."
Anthony, who has taken the stage name Antonio Cabala, is clearly having fun, but he said he's serious about becoming an actor.
"There are three people I must work with: Jim Carrey, Nicholas Cage, and Johnny Depp," he said, cutting into his favorite Jim Carrey imitation. "He's awesome."
Contact Jennifer Feehan
at jfeehan@theblade.com
or 419-353-5972.
First Published August 15, 2006, 10:52 a.m.
