Antonio Banderas: Banderas on the Run

How does a budding sex god handle any flack his career advisors might hand him about playing a gay man in such a high-profile movie? "All that stuff is changing," he counsels, shrugging it off. "Look at the work Elizabeth Taylor has done for AIDS awareness. The people [this movie] attracted, like Tom, Denzel Washington, Joanne Woodward, Mary Steenburgen, Jason Robards, all wanted to be in an entertaining story that also had something to show. None of them thought twice about it." His eyes brim as he relates a story of his final shooting day on the movie, when he casually said to a crew member, who has AIDS, "See you at the premiere." His coworker replied, "If I'm still alive." Banderas observes, "He didn't say it feeling sorry for himself or anything. It just was a fact of life. And I don't know if I will see him there, either."

Relating this story, his eyes burn with fierce empathy that makes one certain he's more than an adroit technician using his mojo to appear politically correct. He radiates sweet, all-embracing openness, uncommon in any being let alone an actor, that adds just the right touch of sugar to his salsa. From the first, directors have been struck by this.

Banderas made his movie debut at 22 in Pedro Almodovar's Labyrinth of Passion and became part of the director's repertory company for several years. But in 1989, Banderas slipped out of Almodovar's High Heels at the last minute to do The Mambo Kings instead. It's not that Banderas has never starred in a film for anyone else--he's worked for Carlos Saura and Felix Rotaeta, for instance. But Almodovar is different, a guy Banderas calls "the kind of person who'd rip the skin off your body to see what's going on inside."

How did Banderas feel about making the break and taking on the challenge of English-language films? "I was working with him in five films for 10 years. I didn't think: 'It's time to break out of the relationship.' I decided to do another step, breathe new air, fly away and know other people. And Hollywood, all around the world, is something for an actor."

Was the director, whose movies turned Banderas global, steamed by his apparent defection? "At first, he was a little bit upset with me," Banderas admits. "I went to his home one night in Madrid and told him, 'Pedro, listen, they offered me [The Mambo Kings], I want to do it.' I knew he couldn't tell his movie team of 40, 50 people, 'We'll have to wait for Antonio.' And he decided to do High Heels with Miguel Bose instead. And it was great. Pedro gave me a picture of him and me in New York that he signed: 'Mambo Kings play sad songs.' But now, we can talk by phone and are still friends. He was disappointed. So was I. But we are very young people and we are going to work together in the future. I am sure of that."

After a moment, Banderas admits wistfully, "It was a very strange sensation to go with my wife, Pedro and Miguel [Bose] to the opening night of High Heels in Madrid. Opening nights of Pedro's movies all over Europe are big events. You see, everybody thought Almodovar would have power a year, two, but not forever. He's smarter than that. A problem we Spanish have is that only when someone becomes celebrated all around the world do we recognize them as well. That happened with Pedro. Picasso, too. So, I had been with him to the last consecutive five premieres. But, at this one, it was all about Pedro, Miguel, Victoria Abril and the very good work they had done together. There was a kind of sadness. But that disappeared because The Mambo Kings was coming."

And, as it happened, going. Fast. The failure of The Mambo Kings is surprising considering what Oscar Hijuelos's turbulently sexy, tragic Pulitzer Prize-winner could have been. This is a project at which Martin Scorsese had reportedly taken a long look. Banderas prefers to focus on some of the absurdities of making his American movie bow, not the results. "When I had my first interview in London with [director] Arnold Glimcher," he recalls, giggling, "I only knew three, four lines of English to be used at the right moment. The most important was: 'I can do that.' I was the last one to be cast, so I read with Kevin Kline and Annabella Sciorra, who were going to play my brother and my wife.

So Arnold put me in a Berlitz school in New York for a month to learn English with a bunch of business executives from Japan and France. I saw people crying there, like me, because I thought, I am so stupid I will never learn this language. One month later, the actors I'd read with were both gone; now, it was Armand Assante and Maruschka Detmers and it was different. And then I had to speak with all these big executives at Warner Bros., Terry Semel and all, and I even forgot Spanish. I would use a word like 'bottle,' and be thinking, What a strange word." He adds, shrugging philosophically and shading his voice with a nostalgia that suggests what a soul-shredder he could have been in a better movie, "Still, it was one of the most beautiful experiences of my life."

Though the experience of The Mambo Kings was not quite so beautiful for audiences, the movie helped get other American moviemakers to take notice of Banderas. John Badham, for instance, considered Banderas for Point of No Return (and, lucky for Banderas, passed). One hears also that Banderas came within a bat's whisker of stirring hearts and loins as Bram Stoker's Dracula for Francis Ford Coppola.

Es verdad? Banderas breaks into a soulful smile at the memory. "An agent from ICM took me to Francis's home on a Sunday morning. I thought I was going to a Beverly Hills mansion, but it's a very normal home in a very Italian style, like a villa. I rang the bell a long time and nobody was opening the door. But I heard the TV inside. Finally, Francis came to the door with a towel [around his waist], saying, 'Hello, how are you? Please, sit down. Wanna watch some TV?' I found him very familiar, very charming, more like someone from Italy or Spain. Well, you know Francis and wine. We sat with some of his own wine having a very nice, quiet conversation about Italy and mothers. It was Mother's Day and he said, 'You have to call your mother.'"

Anyway, Banderas continues, "A week later, he called and said, 'I'm gonna send you scenes from the script. Would you mind reading to play Dracula?' He made an appointment to meet me in a big empty church on Hollywood Boulevard, where the whole afternoon I read, he whispered very good, strange things like, 'Keep a secret from me. Invent something horrible if you like, say, you killed your mother with a knife and hid her in a suitcase.'

A couple of weeks later, he asked me to come to San Francisco: 'Bring your wife. We'll have a nice day talking, walking.' And we did. The boat from Apocalypse Now was out there. The whole thing was like a living museum. I screen-tested with Winona. And all the while I also tested with my wife, Francis was eating spaghetti, saying, 'Look at your husband. He looks very good, doesn't he?' I didn't get the part, but it was such a nice, strange experience. Like working with a god. Maybe I should write 'My Three Days with Francis.'"

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