On Cold Case, Detective Scotty Valens can’t get over the death of his fiancée. In real life, Danny Pino, 32, can’t get over the arrival of his baby, Luca.
  
“My life has taken a 180-degree turn away from Valens. I am so far away from my character right now,” he says. In fact, when asked what he’d like to accomplish in the future, Pino simply says, “I want to be the best dad I can possibly be.”
  
Still, Pino’s got plenty on his acting plate. Cold Case kicked off its fourth season this fall, and his other labor of love, the Andy Garcia–directed Lost City, also arrived in theaters, along with Flicka, a film with Maria Bello.
  
“It’s really challenging to give your job the same amount of attention and passion with which you’ve been doing it for the last several years,” Pino says. “But I think the passion I have for my family and the passion I have for my work feed each other.”

STAYING FRESH
Actors on one-hour TV dramas routinely mention the grind of 14-hour days and the difficulty of playing the same character for years and years. But Pino finds the work constantly fascinating.

“You get to really understand what Valens is going through and how every single moment, every single interrogation, has to be different,” Pino says. “Series work provides a huge challenge for an actor. You want to infuse each and every scene with something new.”
  
Detective Valens is a bit of a player, while Pino has found his center at home, but he appreciates the differences between himself and his character. “One of Valens’ flaws is that he gets involved pretty immediately with the ladies,” Pino says. “He really wants to share his life with somebody, but he always picks the wrong woman. That’s how Valens gets in trouble.
These girls aren’t necessarily right for him.”

Both Detective Valens and his partner, Lilly Rush, played by Kathryn Morris, are straightforward investigators who compliment each other, but work differently.
  
“What’s interesting about Valens is that it’s his job to get to the truth, using whatever strategies and tactics he has to employ,” Pino says. “It’s not always about getting in someone’s face and strong-arming them. Some people need to be coddled, some need to be flirted with, some need to be exalted. I play a character who tries to find the best way to get to the truth.”
   
While Pino has grown to love his TV work, he appreciates working in the theater, which these days is a special treat for the busy actor. He starred opposite Madonna in Up for Grabs in London’s West End, and he appeared with Billy Crudup in the New York Shakespeare Festival’s productions of Measure for Measure and The Winter’s Tale.
 
“What’s great about a play is that you get to carry a character through three hours of a story and you’re really able to feel what that character’s arc is throughout that period of time. You are able to build that performance and the audience will let you know immediately whether the scene is working. On television and on film, it’s so fragmented and out of order.”
 
A CUBAN DREAM COME TRUE
Pino especially enjoyed working with Garcia on The Lost City, a film about the untold story of the Cuban revolution, shot in the Dominican Republic. Pino has Cuban roots and grew up in Miami.  “When I’m away from Miami I feel very Cuban, and when I’m in Miami I feel very American,” he says. “I love guava turnovers as much as I love apple pie. But I’ve never been to Cuba, and that’s been a purposeful choice. There have been too many people who have died and sacrificed, so I won’t go while Castro is still in power.”
 
When he learned about Garcia’s 16-year passion project, he had his agents chase down the script. He personally wrote letters to Garcia, asking for a role in the movie, which he won. “The premise is a story I’ve heard over and over again in different versions since my childhood,” he says. “It’s the kind of story you hear from your uncles and grandfathers while they are smoking cigars and playing dominoes.
 
“Hollywood hasn’t told the story of the Cuban revolution in the way Cubans know it. It’s been a romanticized version of Castro and the revolutionaries. You never really got a sense of how the Cuban people felt at that time, until now.”
 
GIVING BACK  
In his limited spare time, Pino works with two charitable organizations— Court-Appointed Special Advocates (CASA) and the Roxy Theatre Group in Miami. Pino’s cousin got him involved in CASA about a year and a half ago.

“CASA’s goal is to appoint a volunteer for every child in the foster care system, which is absolutely swamped,” he says. “Social workers who are working for departments of child services are overwhelmed and don’t have the resources to maintain specific relationships with these foster children and keep on top of what their situations are at home and at school. Volunteers for CASA develop a one-on-one relationship with these children and are able to advocate for them through the court.”
 
Besides that, Pino and his wife, actress Lilly Bernal, are working to save the Miami children’s theater in which Pino got his start. “It’s the archetypal story of the good theater that is trying to keep its doors open. We’re looking for that happy ending right now.”