Andy Garcia says his daughter, Dominik Garcia-Lorido, does a great job in their new film “City Island.” In fact, there’s only one thing missing from her performance: clothes.
Garcia-Lorido, 26, plays a college student who makes ends meet by working at a local strip club, and even though there’s no R-rated nudity in the brief pole-dancing scenes, writer-director Raymond De Felitta says Papa Garcia didn’t want to be around while those scenes were shot.
“He told me, ‘You handle that.’ I’ll be in the family scenes with her,” De Felitta says. But Garcia shrugs off any awkwardness.
“Her character is not really a stripper — she’s hanging upside down on the pole in a bikini,” Garcia says. “That’s a long way from stripping in a movie. If she had to strip — ask her — she might not do it. It’s her life at this point. I have certain things that I feel and I can’t impose them on her.”
Garcia’s old-fashioned concern, especially coming from someone in the anything-goes world of show business, is so unusual it’s almost quaint. If only Dina Lohan had steered her daughter in a similarly conservative direction.
But then, Garcia seems to be that rare thing in Hollywood: a happily married family man. The Cuban-born actor, who immigrated with his parents to Miami in 1961 when he was 5, has been married since 1982 — to the same woman even, Marivi Lorido. They met at a nightclub seven years earlier, when Garcia was a student at Florida International University. He was so smitten, he proposed marriage on the spot.
Since then, he’s become a solid character actor with roles in “The Untouchables,” “The Godfather Part III” and the “Ocean’s Eleven” series.
Garcia and his wife have three daughters and a son, and splits time between LA and Miami.
Dominik Garcia-Lorido recalls her father as strict when she was growing up. She was never given keys to the house, so her parents would always have to meet her at the door when she came home — which meant no sneaking in. She also recalls the time Dad punched a hole through her bedroom door. He was knocking, but she had fallen asleep and didn’t answer, so he smashed through.
“He’s pretty old-fashioned,” Dominik Garcia-Lorido says — a fact that anyone looking to date his bombshell daughter should keep in mind.
“When someone shows up at the house to take my daughter out, I’m not going to throw a party for him,” Garcia says of his past behavior. “It’s not my job to be their best friends. They have to know there are some repercussions to their behavior.”
Pops, however, has mellowed.
“I’m the oldest, and after having had one girl in high school, he’s learned,” Garcia-Lorido says. “He didn’t know what it was like to have a teenager, then with the next [daughter] it gets a little more laid back and by the next one, he’s just like, ‘Whatever.’”
Garcia clearly dotes on and supports his children — all of whom, including 8-year-old Andres — want to act. During a joint interview with father and daughter, Garcia was content to let the bubbly Dominik answer most of the questions, clearly aware that “City Island” was her first big publicity moment. (The pair had done “The View” the day before.)
Garcia is all for his kids following in his footsteps. Middle daughter Daniella landed bit roles in “The Shield” and “Without a Trace.” And youngest daughter Alessandra joined Andres for cameos in 2005’s “The Lost City,” a Havana-based drama directed by dad.
“I don’t think I said, ‘You should act,’” Garcia says. “It was a thing they were doing, and I wanted to encourage them to study if that’s what they wanted to be.”
“There’s something really beautiful about your family having a common ground of passion,” Dominik Garcia-Lorido says. “You see families like the Bridges [as in recent Oscar-winner Jeff] who are friends of ours, and how they make it work. I think it has brought us closer.”
Garcia’s stable home life is a far cry from his character’s in “City Island,” opening Friday. The film, set in The Bronx’s enclave of City Island, follows an unhappy Italian-American family, each member of which is harboring a secret. Father Vince (Garcia) is a prison guard who attends acting classes on the sly, teen son Vinnie Jr. (Ezra Miller) has a fetish for fat chicks and mom Joyce (Julianna Margulies) has lustful feelings for a new, often-shirtless houseguest (Steven Strait), who also happens to be Vince’s illegitimate child.
Then there’s the aforementioned Vivian (Garcia-Lorido) who got kicked out of school and is now working the pole.
You can imagine Thanksgiving around that table. Or maybe you can’t.
Despite Garcia’s involvement as the movie’s star and producer, De Felitta says his daughter won the role fair and square.
“When you put a movie together, you’re always throwing out impossible names for every role. I can’t remember the names, but we had every hot name of people on TV [to play daughter Vivian],” he says. “It wasn’t a part that they were all that interested in, because it wasn’t a lead.”
Then his casting director, Sheila Jaffe, suggested Garcia-Lorido, whom Jaffe had auditioned for a part in “Entourage.” (She didn’t land it.)
“She was giving me a little nudge to talk to Andy,” De Felitta. “I talked to Andy, and he said, ‘I always thought she could do it, but I didn’t want to be the one to say it. Read her for it, and it’s up to you.’”
The director eventually cast the actress, who had already appeared in two movies with her father, including her first paid acting gig, 1995’s “Steal Little Steal Big.”
Up next for the young actor is “Magic City Memoirs,” a drama about three Miami high school students, which was executive produced by…
…you know who.
reed.tucker@nypost.com