Antonio Banderas stands poised on the edge of the international stardom no Spanish actor before him has ever achieved. If the El Mariachi sequel, Desperado, doesn't do it, the Sylvester Stallone pic Assassins is coming up. On top of that, his affair with Melanie Griffith has made him the topic of Tinseltown's steamiest gossip.
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The last time Antonio Banderas and I connected, the Spanish heartthrob radiated infectious joy, charm, niceness and an unfussy ease with his almost florid who-could-deny-that-I'm-a-movie-star? good looks. That was two years ago. At the time, the pulse-quickening veteran of Pedro Almodóvar sex farces was making his first moves on global stardom. He had already debuted as a melancholy horn player in the Mambo Kings. He had The House of the Spirits in the can. And he was about to hit screens playing the don't-go-for-your-popcorn-or-you'll-miss-him lover of AIDS-stricken Tom Hanks in Philadelphia. If any other Latin but Banderas had taken it his head to seek international leading-man status, particularly with Americans, one would have been seen the mission as quixotic. After all, no Spanish actor has ever achieved leading-man status in America. But with his looks, his moves, his focus, his acting chops, and that sweetness of spirit one seldom encounters outside of beautiful puppies, Banderas wasn't exactly guilty of overconfidence.
In fact, two years later, I'm even more inclined to think international stardom is his due. Next to Hollywood's homegrown, self-enchanted pretty boys and grunge poseurs, Banderas's unabashed, Mel Gibson-level star sheen comes on like a breeze out of Málaga. Merengue-inflected line readings or no, Banderas appears poised to pull off his quest. He has acted in five back-to-back American movies in the fast two years. He stole all his scenes not only in Miami Rhapsody, but, more important, in Interview With the Vampire, Now he is due on-screen exploding into action in Desperado (a.k.a. El Mariachi II), which he'll follow with a hip cameo in Four Rooms, before going on to alternately menace and grind on Rebecca De Mornay in Never Talk to Strangers, to fire up Assassins as Sylvester Stallone's gun-crazy nemesis, and to romance Daryl Hannah and Melanie Griffith in Two Much. All this and a double home-wrecker of an affair with Two Much co-star Melanie Griffith, too.
Today, Banderas greets me like a long lost amigo, beckoning me into his Four Seasons suite. He plops into a Morris chair and fires up the first of many Camels. "It's ridiculous to think you're not going to write about everything that is going on," he says, referring to the furor of gossip about him and Melanie. "I don't know how much you trust me, how much you believe me, but I do not like to lie and I'd rather not do an interview than lie to you." I suggest something radical, especially considering that he is an actor: How about we do the interview and you tell the truth?
Sighing deeply, Banderas says, "The truth is that I am in love. I am in the process of getting separated from my wife, Ana Leza. Things are really painful now, really tough. But I know what I feel and what I feel is really deep and truthful. Out of respect for my ex-wife, out of respect for Melanie Griffith, out of respect for Melanie's ex-partner, I am trying to handle the situation with dignity and integrity. I do not want to destroy my life. It's taken me 43 films and 20 years to get where I am right now. In terms of my personal life, I respect time, too. I build things slowly. I tell you now that time is going to put together all the pieces. People right now may not understand my love and what I have done for it. A lot of news is coming from a lot of sources. And there are many private things that I cannot say now. But I repeat the truth: I am in love."
Look, I know this guy is an actor, a damned good one. But he makes his confession with such passionate conviction that I think, Maybe he'll bring off international stardom and a liaison with a woman you'd think twice about bringing home to mother. (Unless you were really, really pissed with mother,) Still, Banderas could trounce his image if fans perceive him as choosing someone who seems... well, let's be kind here... a long shot in the sweepstakes of enduring love. I think Banderas is terrific, but even I'm looking at him differently knowing where he's been lately.
"If bad things are going to be said about me, I have to bear that," he says when I raise the topic. "If I don't understand that it's part of being in show business, then I'd better go work in a bank. I don't want to enter into the details of why I just broke up with my wife. Melanie is part of the story, of course, but there are many reasons. It's a slow process that was going on before I met Melanie Griffith. The one thing I can tell you, the one thing I want people to understand is that a person fell in love with another person. I fell in love with Melanie. I feel loved by her. Now, this profession is hell sometimes, but that's a price that someone like Melanie, like me or anyone in Hollywood has to pay. I am ready to pay. Melanie and I did not want to keep the story secret, just to give it time. Right now, everything is very hot, very raw. Melanie has kids and that means a lot to her. We're trying to move things on the right track, hurting people as little as possible, I am trying to stabilize my life right now and I cannot say more to you about this, please"
As Banderas sits there puffing away and telling me all this, I register that his nonstop work jag in American-made movies has improved his command of English, though his accent and vibe remain resolutely Spanish. I also note he looks amazing, which is an accomplishment, given that he's obviously stressed out as well as overworked. "After these two wonderful, crazy years of work, I have to seriously consider stopping because I don't want to be overexposed," he says. From what I can tell, I say, there's no way he could get exposed enough. Judging from the response his name engenders, the popular cry seems to be IMucho mas Antonio! "This will happen until I get fat and lose my hair," he declares, grinning and betraying the merest hint of vanity. "And both of those things will happen." he adds.
Until he becomes a guzzler of Slim-Fast and a shill for Hair Club For Men, though, Banderas will be dealing with celebrity. At the Four Seasons he's had to register under an assumed name, for reasons having nothing to do with Melanie Griffith. "It's sad that I, or anyone, has to do this secret, sneaking kind of stuff,'" he says quietly, "but it's because of this guy who keeps following me." As Banderas goes on to talk about this misguided admirer, he does so with sadness, not rancor. He ends up staring at the ground, and his English fails him. After a long pause, he says, shrugging, "I'm not such a big star. I am just a little planet. In Spain, people don't put so much attention on the star system. But here in America, I can feel it. Mostly, people are very, very nice. But there are also a bunch of fanatics behind the stars."
Doesn't this go with the territory for a guy who wants to be a major star, especially one whose very presence whispers--now more than ever--Latin lover? "For me, it's not about being a star," Banderas says. "I am lucky, that is all. Lucky because there are a lot of people--producers, directors, people who buy tickets-- who put confidence in me." Still, if he does become a big star, will he whine about his loss of privacy? He shakes his head no, with resignation, "If I were to become a star, I will accept everything that comes with it. I mean, I can enjoy arriving to the Oscars with a limo. But it's only a part of my profession."
Tossing back cascades of wavy hair from his forehead, he explains, "I admire people who are fantastic actors and because of that became stars. I think you can play this poker match in a different way--by finding a balance between being an actor and giving the star system what it needs. You can play safe without getting yourself involved in parties, big smiles and being brilliant all the time. I told you this last time and I mean it: I am not that brilliant. You see, I'm not a star because I am not someone who is playing myself in front of the world. I am not criticizing being a movie star, but I think that to be a star requires you to be brilliant 24 hours a day. That is something that is not in me."
Oh, isn't it? Check out his Interview With the Vampire scenes in which, even in a Lily Munster fright wig, he comes off as malevolent, absurd, flamboyant, sly--a Charles Boyeresque, come-wizmee-to-de-Cas-bah Continental seducer. Not even Brad Pitt or Tom Cruise could block his light. "Tom Cruise is the star," Banderas protests. "He and Brad did a very good job, I watched the movie here at the hotel on cable last night and it's classic, not your typical horror movie, more subtle, more human, more British than a Hollywood movie, not like--" He leaps out of the chair, essays a hilariously campy vampire turn out of a grade-Z Mexican horror movie, then slithers back into his chair. "The movie is more a reflection about immortality." Did he think well, in retrospect, of the character Armand that he created? "When I do a movie, I sometimes feel impotent. I think, "Oh man, I would like to change this character, to push this button and that button."
"Knowledge arrives late," he continues, laughing. "The best thing to do is to play the role from here to here," he says, moving his hands from the waist up. "In the range of possibilities that you can really manage. If you try to go too high, too low, too east, too west, the audience detects that immediately. If we do the sequel, I will have more space to develop Armand the way I want."
Which, I've heard, may happen, perhaps as soon as director Neil Jordan completes his current movie project. "I don't think they have a script yet, but Neil told me a couple of nights after the premiere that in the second part we are going to go back in time, to see Armand in the position that Louis was in Interview With the Vampire, a person who must overcome all the problems that go with being a vampire, a person who has had a terrible confrontation with Lestat. It's not going to be a continuation, but a chance to go back and show him as insecure, confused and also confident that he will soon have control over his situation."
The prospect of landing a franchise character in a series of movies, which not only the Vampire chronicles, but Desperado offers, delights Banderas. Robert Rodriguez's sequel to his tiny-budget, critically-acclaimed slambanger El Mariachi is little more than driving, shooting, avenging and cool camera angles, but it enjoys a loud, raucous buzz among industry insiders.
"I would like to have a continuing character, just for having that experience," Banderas admits. "'It would not scare me. It would not become a trap, because it isn't the first thing I have done in my career, you know? Desperado is going to be great because the movie is a cross fire from beginning to end, very stylish, but like a cartoon, a Sam Peckinpah kind of thing. It looks like a Western, until somebody sticks an automatic weapon into the frame. Playing it was completely different for me because the character is obsessed, he knows that he is wrong but he cannot stop. He has to kill the bad guys who killed the woman he loved."
The woman he loved. OK, so I admit I keep wanting to reintroduce the topic of Melanie Griffith. I decide to test the waters by asking him who, among such on-screen partners as Winona Ryder and Sarah Jessica Parker, has been his best screen sex partner? "Victoria Abril is the best kisser." he asserts, referring to his co-star in Almodóvar's Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! and three other movies.
So, no mention of Griffith. But what about the near-kiss with fellow vampire Brad Pitt in Interview? "With Brad, it was, in a way, a kiss, a sad good-bye kiss. It was not in the script. Brad and I planned it. It's just that we wanted to push a little bit the sexuality of these characters. Sex between vampires is not the same as with normal people. The act of killing is probably the point, sexually, between them and we were playing with that idea in that scene. We wanted to push a little more the feeling of the strange sexual relationship between these strange humans. I always feet that art in general and acting in particular should make the audience a little uncomfortable, to slap them and wake them up.
"When you see paintings by Picasso, whom I love, some of them make people unbelievably uncomfortable," he says, highly animated. "In the museums in Barcelona, you have all of these people filled with morality, lovers of art, confronted with a Picasso of a woman sucking a man's enormous dick, you know?" He breaks off, miming with his hands a penis the size of Mount Fuji, then continues, "And there's another painting of a man sucking a woman's pussy. It's Picasso and people have to accept it because this is life, it happens, and Picasso reflects that in these paintings. Real artists have the responsibility to break rules."
Given Banderas's refreshing ease with matters sexual and given what must be opportunities galore, has he ever availed himself of a gay experience? "No, never have," he replies. "Nature made me different. I don't know why. Even I don't deny that someday it could happen. I've done gay characters several times in my life and I tried to do it in the most honest way. People have said, What about box office? What about your image? You know, keep your image clean, in terms of morality, in from of society. But I am not afraid of that. I've never played a queen. I always played a guy who was comfortable with his problems, who reacts not so differently from a heterosexual guy. It's not such a big deal. I think most actors think in the same way,"
Though he has scored such strategic successes as Interview With the Vampire, does Banderas feel that maybe he's done too much that is not the best material? "I turned down many opportunities in American movies," he says, sounding only slightly wounded. "Sometimes, I've taken things just because I liked the purl, even if it was small. When I first came here, it was like I was starting alt over again. I had been doing leading characters in my country for five years. There is no tradition of actors from Spain coming to this country. I had done dozens of movies in Spain where, to survive, you have to do a lot of jobs, to jump from movie to movie because they pay you so few dollars to do any movie. You have to keep working, sometimes pick some things that you are not interested in, just because you are a professional. So, I am coming from a work world which is completely different."
Breaking into a grin, Banderas declares, "In Spain, they are proud of me because I am considered like an international soccer player. I have to win a battle outside so that I can represent my country. In a way, they are going, 'Antonio, don't blow it!'"
So, how does this Castilian de Tocqueville suss out his second country? "I am no sociologist, no politician." he says. But he is, he admits, fascinated by America's "contradicciónes." He explains, "Smoking cigarettes is really bad, you know, but what about guns and other serious stuff?" (Spoken like a true smoker.)
"Everything here in Los Angeles is masks, metaphors, unreality," Banderas continues. "Everything is concerned with image, the box office, stars. But America is many Americas. What I love about Americans is how pragmatic they are. They don't think and obsess in a sick way about doing something. In Europe, you can feel the weight of many years of history. In a village eight kilometers away from another village, people speak a different language, have their own culture that they want to preserve. People here resolve a problem, act fast, and I love that. Here, ideas are volatile; people believe in people. If you're 60 years old here and you come up with a good idea, you get to develop that idea. In Europe, it's all hierarchies."
When Banderas tells me that one of his ambitions is to go back to Spain to direct that most Spanish of stories, Don Juan, I ask if he feels up to playing the World's Greatest Lover based on his own experience. For instance, was his first sexual awakening blissful? "'The first couple of times I made love, it was a fiasco," he recalls, laughing, "We were friends, young teenagers, and she was someone who I knew for a long time. It just happened." Did the earth move? "No," he says, emphatically. "Luckily, over the years it got more successful."
I tell Banderas that now that we've gotten deeply superficial, why don't we tick off the whys and wherefores of the avalanche of movies he's about to be seen in? Some of which sound, I hasten to add, dubious. I mean, icaramba! Movies co-starring Rebecca De Mornay? Daryl Hannah? Sylvester Stallone? (Melanie Griffith?) "Mainly, it is the script and director I consider. Sometimes I ask for advice because I am confused about whether this is going to be good or bad. Actors are another consideration. It's better to be in a little part with quality people surrounding you. For me, the people that surround you in a movie are what you are.''
OK, let's apply his rules of engagement as we rifle through his recent career choices. What about Four Rooms, a four-parter directed by, among others, Quentin Tarantino and Allison Anders? "I'm probably only on the screen for five minutes, but I got the chance to work with Tim Roth. The content is nothing; it just gave me the opportunity of doing something completely different. It's like a German expressionistic movie."
When I bring up Two Much, his romantic-comedy with Melanie Griffith for Fernando Trueba, the Oscar-winning director of Belle Epoque, Banderas's eyes light up and his voice takes on an excited lilt. He calls the movie, in which he plays a con artist who impersonates his own twin to romance Melanie Griffith and Daryl Hannah simultaneously, a "comedy blanco."
He continues, "It is blanco, pure. We don't even say a bad word in it, like the way comedies were done in the '40s or '50s. It's an intelligent comedy, like Lubitsch, Billy Wilder or the best Blake Edwards. I love movies like this, like Breakfast at Tiffany's with George Peppard and Audrey Hepburn-- fantastic! It's very funny, very romantic, very tender and it's the first time we can see in a movie made in America a Latino character, kind of a con man but funny and with & big heart, who is having an affair with two blonde Anglo girls. I loved making it, too, because I was one of the last people to be cast and the role was not written specifically for a Latin. And Joan Cusack--the third woman in the movie--she is a great actress, and I loved working with her." He adds, laughing, "I know you will ask me, so I will tell you, both Melanie and Daryl are very good kissers. It was very nice."
Indeed. And at what point did he and Griffith realize they were falling for each other? He says, quietly, "That's not something that I have to hide. We did not jump into... into having a relationship from the beginning. It came little by little. Slowly. But we were falling in love while we were shooting. It was something unavoidable. Melanie and I finished the movie, saying. 'Let's just forget it because probably it's just an illusion, something that happened in movieland.' But it wasn't like that. I really needed her and she needed me."
Understood. But does it trouble him that, among the things Griffith has needed in the past, are addictive substances and an apparently addictive relationship with Don Johnson? "I'm aware of that," he says. "When you fall in love you don't see all these things. But I understand the story of Melanie Griffith. I accept everything--everything--she brings with her. I am not trying to change her. The woman I have found has been through many things in her life. Fortunately, she put herself together again. She is not involved anymore with alcohol or anything else. I want to help her. I want to make her happy. I want to try to just give her all the love that I can. If that is going to help her as a person, I am going to be the happiest man in the world. People can say, 'This is a challenge.' I don't think so. I think Melanie is aware of what she is. There is no regret or remorse in her life. She is a wonderful lady and I want to be by her side. If it doesn't work, I'll take my things and go away. If it works, it will be wonderful." Works, as in married with (her) children? "I don't want to get married right away," he asserts. "I don't want to rush things. I want to take my time to see how my relationship with Melanie is going to work. If life is good to us, if we do something nice with our lives together, maybe people can say in three or four years. We 're proud of you guys. You did it! Right now, it's nothing you can guarantee. We are moving our lives by feelings. And there isn't always the truth in feelings. But that's what I am now. There is no way that I can stop it or do anything else.''
Whew. This guy is in love in a big way. A little reluctantly, I steer back the subject to flicks, namely, Never Talk to Strangers, a Jagged Edge-style psychothriller in which Rebecca De Mornay thinks Banderas is one thing when he is actually quite another. "Sexually, it is very strong and it is kind of the 'Latin lover' sort of role," he explains. Some say Banderas chose to follow that up with director Richard Donner's big-budget Assassins because, aside from the nice payday, it's a desexed, unglamorous tough-guy role, "We've only been shooting for a week and all I've done is just kill people," he says merrily. "I don't have a love scene, I don't have a partner. I don't have anything except killing. Of the rainbow of possibilities of movies that I had to do this year, T was missing an action-comedy. And I am making much more money, of course, but I'm not going to tell you how much more."
All well and good, but, given his desire to be a star who can act, doesn't he want to work with the biggest, most prestigious directors in the business? What happened during his meeting with Steven Spielberg about his, not Andy Garcia's, starring in the planned remake of Zorro? "Andy Garcia is a great actor, man, honest and direct," he says. "It could still happen. Steven said, 'Antonio, we have to be honest. We don't know yet if we want you for the movie. We want you as an actor, but we have to consider all the possibilities with other actors with [bigger] names.''' And what about his working with top actors? "Jodie Foster is an intelligent, strong, powerful, great actress. But I have never had anyone say, You should make a movie with Jodie Foster," he replies. "Julia Roberts is a gorgeous actress. But no one has said to me. Antonio, we 're going to put you and Julia Roberts together''
What they are saying is Antonio, we're going to put you and Madonna together. Banderas enthuses about having signed to play and sing Che Guevara to Madonna's Evita in Alan Parker's movie version of the stage musical about the life and times of Eva Peron. We'll believe that one when we're watching it in the theater, since Banderas has been linked for a long time to the endlessly on-again, off-again project. "Alan's got a very different approach to the project and Madonna has earned the chance to be good in it," says the actor, who in the few seconds he has off from making movies, plays piano and guitar. He tells me he's been rehearsing his song numbers with a four-track tape machine his agents bought for him and a keyboard Daryl Hannah loaned him. When I croon, "Oh, what a circus, oh what a show!" Che Guevara's first sung lines in Evita, he croons back in a mellifluous voice, hooding his eyes and swaying with just the right amount of hokeyness, "Argentina has gone to town over the death of an actress called Eva Peron, We've all gone crazy, mourning all day and mourning all night..." I don't know about Madonna, but I'm guessing Banderas is going to survive that experience just fine.
Still, given recent events in his personal life and given his steady workload, I can't help but ask him if maybe one of the reasons he was working so hard was to avoid his situation at home? "I have to recognize that part of the problems Ana Leza and I had could be my own very tough work schedule," he says, deflecting the implications of my question. "Part of the time I was working I could have spent with my wife. We were both trying to keep the flame alive."
Yet, about this and about his career in general Banderas cautions, "I don't want to have anything that I don't deserve. Sometimes it even bothers me just to see my name built up more than it actually is. I never believe anything that is happening to me, probably because I am very insecure." Is that insecurity part of what's helping him remain grounded in the tempest? "The thing in my mind now is to try and let the storm pass by," he says. "I've got to try and take things these days with a sense of humor. Some of what is happening to me right now is very painful. Sometimes it hurts very much. All I feel is that I did what I had to do."
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Stephen Rebello interviewed Drew Barrymore for the July Movieline.