BURBANK, Calif. -- Joe Mantegna had such a good time playing Dean Martin a couple of years ago that the idea of playing Fidel Castro at the beginning of the Cuban revolution intrigued him.
"Like him or not, he's one of the more important historical figures of the 20th century," Mantegna said of the man who has presided over the communist nation for nearly 40 years."My Little Assassin," airing tonight on Lifetime, tells the story of American teenager Marita Lorenz (Gabrielle Anwar) who falls in love with Castro after a chance meeting in Cuba. She moves there at Castro's request and later becomes pregnant by him.
The movie, inspired by actual events, sheds light on the enigmatic dictator, who remains a mystery to many Americans even in today's world of instant information.
"He's been around so long and it's amazing how little we know about him. He's been very secretive about a lot of his private life," Mantegna said in between bites of a pesto pasta lunch on the Warner Bros. lot.
"I found out he did have this private life, these other women in his life, other children in his life. In a way, it shouldn't be surprising," he said.
"We're the only country that gets so hung up on our presidents. . . . Everywhere else everybody's got mistresses and illegitimate kids."
Marita Lorenz was 19 when she met Castro on the cruise ship her German father captained. Her mother, played by Jill Clayburgh, was an American who worked for the Central Intelligence Agency.
The real-life Lorenz provided insight on her complicated relationship with Castro during a visit to the movie's Los Angeles set. Lorenz, now in her late 50s, lives in New York City. Mantegna says she has little or no contact with her former lover.
"She's a strong woman. I could see where she could've climbed under his skin a bit when she was a young woman, but this guy was never a one-woman guy," he said. "He's the great love of his life; I think power is the great love of his life."
In the movie, the pregnant Lorenz is drugged in Havana and believes she has lost her baby after FBI agents tell her she had an abortion ordered by Castro. She is shot at by unknown assailants while trying to call Castro from a phone booth in New York, then is trained by the FBI and sent back to Cuba to assassinate Castro.
"I would tend to say that a lot of what she says is true and probably is the way things happened," Mantegna said of Lorenz.
Mantegna plays Castro as a man deeply concerned about how history will view him.
"I think he's a little deluded if he thinks that they'll all look back on it and say, 'Wow, he was a visionary,"' Mantegna said. "I don't think he will be remembered as fondly and as greatly as he would've liked and probably not as badly and as terrible as we would like."
Like his expatriate Cuban friends, such as actor Andy Garcia, Mantegna sees a lot of negative things in Castro's long reign.
"This is a guy that was somewhat of an opportunist. I don't doubt he has somewhat the welfare of his country in mind, but you look and see where that country is at now," Mantegna said. "If he dies, I think things will change."
Mantegna, a Tony Award winner for "Glengarry Glen Ross," played Dean Martin in the 1998 HBO film "The Rat Pack" about Frank Sinatra (portrayed by Ray Liotta), Sammy Davis Jr., Peter Lawford, Martin and pals.
The Chicago native has never visited Cuba and doesn't speak Spanish. About the only thing he has in common with Castro is a love of cigars. But he doesn't smoke Cubans in the movie.
"I needed to go through so many of them, it would've taxed the budget," he said. "Let alone they're illegal, but we certainly could've gotten them."
Elsewhere in television ....
TRAGEDY REVISITED: To mark the one-year anniversary of the killing of gay college student Matthew Shepard, MTV is airing an updated version of "True Life: Matthew's Murder." In the special that originally aired last November, MTV News reporter Serena Altschul looks at the Wyoming crime and reaction to it and examines violence against gays and lesbians. The impact of Shepard's death on hate-crime legislation will be included in the revised program, showing 7:30 p.m. EDT Tuesday