The Daily Express - April 11, 2001

Phantom will remove the mask of Zorro blighting Antonio’s life 
by Mark Jagasia

The American film industry is nothing if not shrewd. The handful of actors and actresses it chooses to anoint with the vast wealth of fame do not reach that position purely by luck. And the chosen one most recently being propelled to the top of Hollywood’s tinsel-lined tree is Antonio Banderas. 

Like all superstar actors and actresses before him, Banderas is guaranteed to attract a new generation of eager cinemagoers, which is why Hollywood is becoming so keen to welcome him into its golden pantheon of leading men. 

These days, film executives in Los Angeles cannot look at the star of The Mask of Zorro and Evita without cash tills ringing in their ears. Thanks partly to his talent, his smouldering looks and charms, and thanks partly to demographic changes in America which mean that the vast Latin population is crying out for stars of their own, Banderas has become box office gold. 

His latest film, Spy Kids, a gadget heavy caper for children in which he sends himself up, has had one of the strongest ever openings for a children’s film and has been at the number 1 spot since it was released two weeks ago. 

At 40, Banderas is not overly keen on publicity, especially where his marriage to Melanie Griffith is concerned but, having agreed to one newspaper interview during a fleeting trip to London to attend the British premiere of the film, he turns out to be sweetness personified. 

Banderas speaks fluent English with a thick, husky accent, smokes with an unashamedly European relish and, sitting in a suite in London’s Dorchester Hotel, talks with animation and enthusiasm. He begins with happy tidings both for his own fans and those of Lord Lloyd-Webber. He is going to star in a film version of The Phantom of the Opera, which begins shooting next year. 

"Two weeks ago, Andrew Lloyd Webber called me. He was very excited on the phone. He said, "Antonio, we got it. We’ve got the script that we want to have. And I wrote the new music I wanted to write." 

Though it is well known that Banderas starred in Evita – that other version of a Lloyd Webber smash, what is less well chronicled is his almost obsessive love of the British peer’s ouvre. 

"I know Phantom like I wrote it, not just Phantom, but practically everything that Andrew wrote," says Banderas, who was born in Malaga. "In some way I think I owe being an actor to Andrew because I saw Jesus Christ Superstar in 1973 and it had an incredible effect on me. And from that I started getting into musical theatre. When I was a teenager, I came to London for nine days to visit and I went to the theatre every night, sometimes during the day too. And the first time I saw Phantom it stunned me, the unbelievable music and drama. The moment when I was offered Evita was one of the biggest of my life." 

The actor acknowledges that a strong rear guard action has been fought by fans of Michael Crawford who made the Phantom his own on stage, but seems to take the attitude of all is fair in love and war. 

"Michael Crawford, he made what actors call a creation, something that was his own, but what happens in the movies is not for an individual to decide. I am not the only actor. If you said it was going to John Travolta, not me, I would shrug and wait for another project. With this film we are not trying to draw in people who really love the theatre and go to the movie to see what they saw on stage. That would be wrong," he says. "We are creating a completely different concept, looking at it from a completely different point of view. It will be a new creation with even new music. A lot of the music you have heard in the theatre version is being cut out." 

His passion for musicals aside, the actor is largely seen as a perfect blend of red-hot Latin lover and action hero - a perception for which the swashbuckling Mask of Zorro was largely responsible. 

“In Hollywood I still have that Latin sex symbol label, which annoys me,” he reveals. “I have done comedy, horror movies like Interview with the Vampire, action movies, musicals, adventures, this incredible range of things.” 

The actor – who has worked on more than 50 films talks with passion about his early films with art house director Pedro Almodovar and a forthcoming thriller with Scarface director Brian de Palma, revealing a deep interest in the intellectual side of movie making. 

But it has been made plain before the interview that his publicists will not allow any questions about his marriage – he met Melanie Griffith on the set of the obscure Two Much in 1995 while she was still married to Don Johnson. 

The turbulence of Griffith’s personal live and addictions prior to meeting Banderas is well documented – largely by herself at her own website – but the Spaniard would seem to be a calming influence. 

He is not shy about expanding on why he is wary of talking about his personal life. 

“I don’t like the parallel lives that go with my profession," he says. “I have to cope with that as best I can. Because there is no possible way you can fight it. The guy out there – that Antonio Banderas you read about sometimes, is not me. I don’t recognise him or myself in those things. But there is nothing you can do. I can’t be suing everyone my entire life and, besides, you become a mass of self justifications. I don’t feel I have to justify anything. I think time is fair: time will put everything in its place. I do not say I am better than the guy who is my public image, just different.” 

Banderas, who moves between Malaga on the Costa del Sol and America, certainly does not take his fame for granted and seems clear in his own mind about the reasons behind his popularity. 

“One factor which was already happening in the States was how the Spanish Latino community was growing, we have now become the largest minority. It has as many people in America as the population of Spain," he says. “And these people start having economic power and they go to movies. So look at what is happening now: it’s not only me - you have Jennifer Lopez who is huge, Penelope Cruz, Salma Hayek, Andy Garcia… there are a number of other actors and directors coming up as well. There is now a space for us and it’s not just fashion anymore. The flag has been planted and it will stay. Before, the Spanish community would never go and see Spanish Actors, they wanted to see Tom Cruise because that’s what they wanted to be – they wanted to be America. But something has changed, they are now much more open to their own culture.” 

But just as Arnold Schwarzenegger did not rise to superstardom through his appeal to America’s Austrian community, Banderas’s attraction spreads far beyond a particular ethnic appeal. 

He has a series of projects lined up including a sequel to Spy Kids, which was directed by his closest friend Robert Rodriguez, and a sequel to Desperado, the Mexican action film he also made with Rodriguez, as well as a film called Tarantuala, which will be shot in Spain. 

And as for why he decided to make a kids film at the stage in his career; the actor is perfectly clear, “My little girl Stella is four and a half years and she’s going to grow fast and I just wanted to do a film in which she can go the movie theatre and remember Pappy in the future and say ‘I saw him when I was a little girl.”