The Rediscovery of Antonio Banderas

Q: Any trepidation about tackling such an American milieu?

A: I could give in to my panic and say, "No, I'm not American, it's improper for me to do this movie." But, who directed Chinatown? Someone from Poland. Look at the great American movies Fritz Lang did. Billy Wilder is Austrian, but The Front Page, The Apartment and Some Like It Hot are as American as the Statue of Liberty. Sometimes people who come from "outside" have an objectivity, another point of view that makes things very interesting.

Q: Any concerns about working so closely with Melanie on both sides of the camera?

A: Melanie and I are both aware of the risks and want to take them. I'm working for scale, and I have no participation in the profits. I admired Melanie as a talent before I loved her. She's a great actress, a natural. I may not even direct her--I may just say, "Action" and "Cut."

Q: Melanie often gets knocked or ignored because of public perception of her past, her personal life. Do you feel she's underrated?

A: Working Girl. Stormy Monday. Something Wild. Nobody's Fool. That's what she can do and much more. You're right, her personal life has prejudiced people about both of us. But Melanie's going to have her reward someday. I don't think she's had that yet. If she continues to get to do the work she's doing now, she's going to be recognized as awesome.

Q: You have both been the subjects of unflattering magazine stories, particularly one cover story that became very talked about.

A: When I saw that GQ on the newsstand, I was so excited. The writer and I had talked in New York the day of the premiere of Desperado. She rode with us in the limo. She sat next to us at the premiere. She came to North Carolina, where Melanie was shooting Lolita, and we completely opened our doors to her for two days, talking about politics, charities, our professions, our personal life, our feelings--everything. When I opened the magazine, I found nine pages of a woman insulting Melanie as this bubblehead. I thought, "Where are those days we spent together? Where is our conversation?" All of that gone for nine pages of insults to Melanie?

Q: Do people fabricate wholly untrue stories about you?

A: A writer the other day told me that one of the people who wrote a big story on me was saying in New York that I hit on her. [Laughs] I said, "Whaaaat? No way!" That person was not only in my house, but in my house with Melanie. Why would I do such a thing? I think even journalists are becoming victims of gossip. There's so much competition and so much unchecked information, I believe we're becoming victims of our own technology. People are intoxicated with excessive information. It's strange, but movies are actually becoming more related to reality than information from the news.

Q: You've even become a nude pinup on the Internet.

A: I was naked in Playgirl and it was not even my body, but an image created on the Internet. We went to the magazine and said, "I'm going to sue you," and they said, "No, you can't, because we took this from a source of information, which is the Internet, that we didn't create." So, a guy can go anonymously on the Internet and create whatever he wants? The media have become so complex, you find you're fighting against a monster that is way more powerful than you. I've never sued anyone in my entire life and I think I never will because, if I do, they're going to punch me even more. But some of these people are going to get it in person! [Laughs]

Q: You two have definitely been punching bags for gossip.

A: [Laughs] Did you see that National Enquirer where Melanie stepped into my bedroom and I was supposedly completely naked with a young girl? It was supposedly my masseuse, and they said that Melanie screamed, "From now on, we'll have a masseur!" Not one word of that is true. My publicist called them and asked, "Who said this?" and they said, "An insider." But not one word of that is true! They said, "Tell Antonio that it's fun." Well, it's fun for them. It's fun for someone to read who doesn't like me. For me, it's not a joke.

Q: Does Melanie have anything to worry about in terms of you straying?

A: Melanie has nothing to worry about. I'm not going to tell you that she isn't jealous, but I'm much, much more jealous of her than she is of me. She never says, "Who are you going to shoot with?" But me? Sometimes I'm like, "Who's in the movie with you? How does he look?"

Q: How do you guys handle the gossip?

A: For awhile, we were tacking up the [tabloid] stories on the wall. Melanie rolls on the floor laughing about this stuff. I don't. She doesn't pay the least bit of attention to that. Me, it hurts. When it comes to nasty things in magazines and newspapers, I am like an actor friend of mine. At parties, people will ask him, for a joke, "What did they say about you in 1983 in that newspaper?" and he'll recite the whole bad review word by word, with commas and periods.

Q: What about paparazzi?

A: We've been followed by paparazzi in cars all around the world and have had to escape. We had a very tough time in Argentina [shooting Evita]. Melanie was pregnant and we had to get her to the hospital. It was big news because they wrote that she was going to have an abortion. By the time we came out, it was paparazzi everywhere. We were protected there by the federal police because of the death threats against the _Evita _company When I have my own bodyguards, I always say, "No hits, no punches, just be polite," but these guys were hospital security and they started throwing punches. So I took Melanie and jumped into the car and a bunch of motorcycles were after us. Melanie was crying. The cars and motorcycles trapped us and we had to stop and be photographed. When she was dose to delivering, there had been guys with cameras sitting in trees for three days taking pictures of Melanie going to the bathroom--everything! When I had to take her to the hospital, there were 60 paparazzi outside who wouldn't let us go. I had to take Melanie climbing with me over a wall to a neighbor's house--she was almost delivering. We put her in the back seat of a rental car and covered her with a blanket and sneaked out.

Q: Do you think people started knocking you because of your relationship with Melanie?

A: It would have happened anyway. People want to cheer for the underdog. They like you when you're struggling and competing with the big, big guys in Hollywood. Now I'm on the other side, so they say, "No, you were fantastic when you were down there." No, I wasn't, really. It's a normal reaction, though. My goal now is to win the people back. But I can only do that with my choices of movies and in my personal life. Melanie and I are getting our lives in position for ourselves, for our careers, and very much for our kids, too. We haven't been in any scandals. We don't keep a high profile. We have a very familial life. Little by little, things have stabilized. I feel so much better than two years ago when everything was stormy, when we drew so much anger and ridicule.

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