Matinee idol? Sure. But classically trained actor Antonio Banderas doesn’t rest on looks or laurels.
An interview by John Istel
All Photos: Photofest
Antonio Banderas offers simple advice to aspiring actors: "Work, work, work—and work with joy. There’s no other way." Clearly, this philosophy has worked for one of the most popular actors in Spain’s history. Banderas has made more than 50 films in 20 years, roughly half of which were in English. For his first American film, The Mambo Kings (1992), he learned his lines phonetically.
But it’s not the quantity of work that distinguishes the actor, born as José Antonio Domínguez Bandera in 1960. It’s the ineffable quality that infuses his performances. Yes, he made his reputation the old-fashioned way: he studied his craft in a conservatory in his hometown of Málaga, Spain, and then practiced it in regional touring troupes and at the National Theatre in Madrid. He has plenty of technique. But it’s that something else—maybe the trickster’s twinkle to his eyes or his ability to exude naiveté and world-weariness, danger or domestic bliss—that lends his characterizations a depth of humanity that he was lucky enough to be born with.
Oscar-winning film director Pedro Aldomovar recognized that quality after seeing him on stage. He began casting Banderas in such acclaimed films as Matador, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, and Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! After moving to America, as if acting in a second language wasn’t hard enough, Banderas challenged himself by accepting a wide range of roles. He’s played Tom Hanks’ gay lover in Philadelphia and the befuddled father in the Spy Kids movies. He’s swashbuckled in The Mask of Zorro and "kept his promise" opposite Madonna in Evita. In 1999, Banderas not only directed his first feature—Crazy in Alabama—but he won a Gold Lion Award for it at the Venice Film Festival.
Now’s he’s back at "work, work, work," making his Broadway debut as Guido, the conflicted movie maker around whom the Tony Award-winning musical Nine swirls. Clearly, for him it is a joy. Being in a theatre, he says, feels like "coming home," thanks especially to his producer’s hospitality. "Roundabout is fabulous," he says during a rehearsal break. "Anything that they would ask me, I would do." And he backs that up by spending his lunch hour talking to Front & Center.
FRONT & CENTER: In a way, appearing on Broadway in an American musical is like coming full circle for you, because you’ve said that if it wasn’t for musical theatre you may never have become an actor.
ANTONIO BANDERAS: Absolutely, yes. In 1973, I saw Jesus Christ Superstar on the big screen, and right after that an American company made their way to Spain performing Hair. I saw it in Málaga and it was extraordinarily alive. I understood that theatre wasn’t just literature to be read in school. For about a year after I couldn’t sleep. I was full of anxiety, not knowing what I was going to do with my life. Little by little I found other people like me in Málaga and we put together a theatre group. That’s how everything started. Obviously, the rest of the story you know—I spent five years with the National Theatre of Spain and then Pedro Almodovar saw one of those plays and cast me in one of his movies and from there...
Have you been onstage in a play or musical since those days at the National Theatre?
Oh, my god! The last time I did theatre was 14 years ago in Spain. I have never done theatre in English. And I’ve never done a musical onstage. After the movie of Evita, I’ve sung here and there, but never in front of regular audiences. It’s a totally new experience for me.
How did this particular project come to your attention?
David Leveaux first got in contact with me five years ago when he directed Nine in London. I didn’t feel quite right at the time to do theatre in English—I was a little bit afraid. So I declined. Three years later he came to my house in Los Angeles and he sat down and started talking. Fifteen minutes after, I said yes. David is very persuasive and he totally sold the entire show for me. I did a lot of theatre years ago, but I’ve never seen a director like this—the guy is amazing. The whole entire company is in love with him. He has a great environment here and fantastic ideas and choices. And the way that he treats actors—you feel like you’re something beautiful.
Had you ever seen a production of Nine?
No. My wife Melanie [Griffith] saw it. And some other friends of mine saw it when it was in New York in 1983 with Raul Julia. Now I’m happy that I never saw it. I don’t want my work to be related to any one thing. I want it to come from scratch. If you saw it, there’s a psychological attachment you have to whatever makes you laugh, whatever makes you cry, whatever impacts you that you may try to reproduce again. And I prefer to start from scratch and try to be as honest with the play as I can.
You’ve directed a major film—Crazy in Alabama, which starred your wife, Melanie Griffith. How did that experience help you when you began working on creating Guido, your character in Nine, who is also a film director?
Now I understand much more the hell— the beautiful, creative hell—in which you actually work. On the set, someone is always asking you something. Is the actor going to wear green or blue? Do we need 50 or 100 guys in the square? You feel almost like an answering machine. It’s a very frantic situation and that definitely helped with Guido.
What aspects of playing Guido most challenge you and what parts are most comfortable?
There are a bunch of aspects to Nine that are purely technical, where you have to do a lot of singing. It’s not an easy piece, not a normal musical comedy where you just sing a song. No. It is close to opera in certain ways, which I love. Maury [Yeston] wrote a French song which is going to be sung by Chita Rivera; you have a strip song; a Baroque piece in the second act; also you have songs like the Beatles. You have to train your body to sing these songs, which is very technical. Plus, there’s the English.
Now, how do I feel most comfortable? Well, if you come to the rehearsal, you have the answer. It’s beautiful to work with 16 beautiful, talented girls. Like in the movie 8½ with Marcello Mastroianni, they nurture Guido. Learning how to get from one scene to the next, discovering the internal rhythm of the piece, is something I’m very much enjoying. During the rehearsal I must find my relationship with every one: with Carla, with Claudia, with my wife, my mother.
"As Guido, I want everybody, everything—
like I’m a little kid. But I have to
make choices and decisions."
I recognize in Guido other characters that have been written before: there’s a little bit of Don Juan or Casanova, though Guido has his own dynamic. He is searching in a way for redemption, and redemption arrives at the end of the play. He has to confront this new self and recognize that he’s not nine years old anymore. When you cross into your 40s, like I have—I’m 42—we all have this recapitulation, this realization, "My god—I’m not a kid anymore. This is serious." The character is kind of in this identity crisis, a crisis of age. As Guido, I want everybody, everything—like I’m a little kid. But I have to make choices and decisions. I am right now discovering all of those things, trying to put the character in a box so that I can go to the theatre everyday and just put it on the stage and show it to the people.
I read in old interviews that you were considered a frontrunner for doing the movie version of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Phantom of the Opera. In one article, you said that you had to "build a voice" for the role. I thought that was an interesting expression. How do you go about "building a voice" for a character?
What I meant by that is that I’m not a singer who acts, but I’m an actor who eventually sings. And when I did Evita, for example, the voice for Che Guevara is not actually my singing voice. I built it. I thought of Peron as the "Institution" and so his voice was close to opera technically. Madonna as Eva is mainly a lyric character, and she has beautiful ballads like "Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina." Che is the guy who breaks all the rules. He’s closer to rock and roll, to the guy who actually breaks the institutional rules, and I felt I needed a broken voice that was closer to Joe Cocker, for instance.
Now, Phantom is totally different. He’s someone who’s involved in music but at the same time, he has a certain broken thing. He’s not totally an opera singer. He has a broken soul, a broken face—and definitely a broken voice. That breaking tension in his voice makes him lovable, makes him so you want to be with him. And that’s what I meant by creating a voice of the character.
With Guido, I didn’t program it. I don’t have to "build it" because it’s not going to be a movie in which you go to the studio to record without so many rehearsals. Here, I have six weeks of rehearsals in which we’re finding the vocal character for Guido.
What are you discovering about Guido’s voice so far?
Well, he sings very eclectic pieces, from "Guido’s Song," which is almost like "to be or not to be" in Hamlet but funnier.
My character is basically confused. So there, I’m trying to create a voice that is determined and strong but at the same time creates comedy so people can have a good time with this guy’s problems. But in the second act when I start presenting "Casanova," Guido sings Baroque. It’s like singing Mozart. But because I’m not an opera singer, what we’re doing is also comedy—mining opera, mining Baroque, mining all these little, little things that will allow the audience to fall in love with him in a certain way.
You’ve said in interviews that growing up when you thought of Hollywood movies, you thought of the great musicals with Fred Astaire or Gene Kelly. Who are some of the musical performers that you admire now?
Chita Rivera, for Christ’s sake! Sometimes, I just want to stop in amazement in rehearsal. She doesn’t show it, but she’s carrying 50 years of Broadway history on her back. She was in West Side Story when it was not even a movie! And she’s elegant about it. She’s not imposing anything—she’s just a trouper. I admire her very much. Singers on Broadway are just amazing.
It must be a bit scary being surrounded by all those talented women.
The standards are very high here. But I decided to just take all the panic and fears and leave them in my apartment. I come to the theatre with my heart open, with my soul full of joy, and try to be focused and happy about what I am doing. And you know, God will provide. For me, coming back here—look what I said—I’ve never been here. I mean, coming back to the theatre is like coming home. After these rehearsals with these actresses I don’t understand how I could be so long out of the theatre when it was my first inspiration. Rehearsals are going so well, it’s freaky. Coming from movies, this is like heaven.
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