Antonio Banderas

Episode notes

Photo: Robyn Beck/AFP via Getty Images

Antonio Banderas is one of the most versatile, charming and handsome performers out there today. You’ve probably seen him in Zorro, Philadelphia, or Desperado. Maybe you heard him in Shrek – he played the voice of Puss in Boots. Maybe you’ve seen his latest movie: Paddington in Peru. He plays a treasure hunter in it named Hunter. 

When he joined us back in 2019, he’d just taken on a very different role – one he said was among his most challenging. His friend and frequent collaborator, director Pedro Almodóvar, had a new script for a movie called Pain and Glory. It’s about a guy named Salvador Mallo. He’s a director who made a handful of well-regarded sex comedies in the 80s, but when we meet him, he’s stuck. He isn’t really making movies anymore. He hardly has the drive to go out. He’s struggling with headaches, back pain, and asthma. 

The performance Banderas gives is beautiful. Rather than do an impression of Almodóvar, he personifies the director’s pain. His need to still create, despite his suffering. 

Banderas also talks to Bullseye about his upbringing in Spain before and after a dictatorship, starting his acting career in the U.S before he knew how to speak any English at all, and how his acting experience in Hollywood did not, for the lack of a better term, translate to acting in Spanish films.

An original version of this interview aired in November of 2019