Marquee Marc Anthony

Much of America's first exposure will instead come via this month's Bringing Out the Dead, which could also be warping, since Anthony plays a dreadlocked, blood-spattered homeless guy—"the soul of the movie," per Scorsese. Anthony's also meeting with a director about what might become his first lead film role—if you don't count the never-released East Side Story. "Let's start with Hackers," Anthony suggests, laughing. Well, there was that, and his The Substitute gangbanger, and his Big Night waiter.

He's still waiting for his From Here to Eternity. But first there's the matter of redirecting his music. After he split acrimoniously with RMM Records last year (where he made his most dynamic salsa records, 1996's Todo a Su Tiempo and 1997's Contra la Corriente) and signed with Columbia for releases in both languages, it wasn't clear what form his English re-debut would take. "It's a delicate balance," says Sony Music Entertainment chairman Tommy Mottola. "You want to be careful not to interfere with the credibility of what he is, since he's like a god of that kind of [Latin] music. So we took our time and went through a few experiments."

The singer is emphatic that the surfeit of supremely romantic balladry he finally included in Marc Anthony—which has disappointed some usually supportive reviewers—is really him. "What you see is what you get," he says. "My God, I don't have the time nor the energy to live up to some persona.... I understand what it is to be vulnerable, and I understand what it is to be strong. So anybody who bashes 'sentimental' is missing it. I've seen the toughest guys in the world cry. That macho thing is an old folktale. I'm not afraid of it at all."

Certainly the pop world is lacking for unashamed romantics who can sing their way out of a hat. But it's the album's scarcer upbeat, Latin-tinged songs that are grabbing people. And not coincidentally, it's those tunes Anthony describes as capturing his mind-set. "If you could look into my head, with what I've been doing for the past eight years, plus my influences growing up, you'd hear an 'I Need to Know,' which has a little bit of everything. If you could just live there for a second, that's what it sounds like." If Anthony ever stops drawing a dividing line between his Spanish and English careers, and we get to spend an entire album in that melting pot in his head, la revolucion may really get under way.