Antonio Banderas’ personal connection to his favourite filmmaker: “I love the scope of the movie”
When considering which of Antonio Banderas’ movie moments are the most iconic, it’s a little bit hard to get past one in which he didn’t even have to speak. In fact, he wasn’t even on the screen at the time.
I’m talking, of course, about that moment in 2004’s Shrek 2 when Puss in Boots, voiced brilliantly by Mr Banderas, takes off his little black hat, holds it in front of him and does that cute face with big pleading eyes and makes everyone go “awww” and has since launched a thousand memes. Legendary stuff.
Aside from assisting in CGI-generated feline perfection, Banderas has had quite the film career, from his 1990s heyday as the sword-toting, smooth-talking ‘Zorro’ and bad guy-slaying ‘El Mariachi’ in Desperado to doing his best to upset a gang of posh London children and an errant bear in last year’s Paddington in Peru.
The actor actually started off as a footballer on the streets of Spain until an injury forced a change of plans and saw him enrol in theatre school. It was a move that paid off in spades as Banderas was noticed by famed Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar, who cast the young actor in several movies throughout the 1980s, including Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down, which was an international hit and grabbed the attention of none other than Madonna.
She then brought Banderas over to Hollywood, casting him in a concert video and earning him roles in big films like Interview with a Vampire and 1993’s Tom Hanks hit Philadelphia.
He probably reached the high point of his fame and success between the late 1990s and mid-2000s, starring on screens with Angelina Jolie in Original Sin, playing the dad in the ‘shrunk-down James Bond’ Spy Kids franchise, and that performance as Shrek’s furry friend that eventually earned him two spin-off movies as Puss.
In terms of his own influences, Banderas is very much a fan of some of the most renowned directors in Hollywood, especially the legendary man behind Citizen Kane, a movie many consider the best ever made. Asked for his five favourite movies by Rotten Tomatoes, Banderas revealed, “I’m going to go to a guy who, being American, loved Spain; actually, he’s buried physically in the land where my father was born, in Ronda, Spain. His name is Orson Welles, and the movie is Touch of Evil.”
A film noir, Touch of Evil came almost 20 years after the global success of Citizen Kane, and was written and directed by Welles. The film starred huge Hollywood names including Charlton Heston, Janet Leigh and Marlene Dietrich and suffered from a number of issues during production, including Welles falling out with studio bosses and being thrown off the set.
While the film opened to mixed reviews from critics and audiences alike, it has since gained widespread recognition as one of Welles’ finest works, with his inventiveness using the camera proving influential and radical.
Elsewhere, Banderas selected other more established classic films for his top five, including The Godfather and David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia, of which Banderas says: “I love the scope of the movie; there is something in David Lean that I like very much. He’s always of the macro worlds, and the micro worlds; he didn’t only do it in Lawrence of Arabia, but repeated it in Dr Zhivago and other movies… He gets into the soul of a man through this spectacular movie and this union of these two worlds.”
He also chose Federico Fellini’s classic 8½ from 1963, noting, “It’s still a very experimental movie, very emotional in a way”, and The Exterminating Angel, a Spanish black comedy made the previous year about a group of high society guests trapped after a dinner party.
It’s clear from Banderas’ picks that the man likes to dip his toes in all kinds of genres and narratives, from expansive world-building features to deeply meditative and philosophical works. For someone who had premiered his movie career holding Almodóvar’s hands, his love for Orson Wells hardly comes as a surprise.
