“The Mambo Kings” didn’t turn the Spanish actor into an overnight U.S. sensation, but it was the beginning of an international odyssey that has brought him, this August morning, to the poolside of the Spanish-style Brentwood home he shares with actress Melanie Griffith and her kids. The street happens to be the same one O. J. Simpson lives on, his landlord happens to be Michelle Pfeiffer and Banderas, now in possession of fluent if somewhat idiosyncratic English, happens to be the busiest, and perhaps the hottest, new star in town.
At the moment, the heat is coming from his smoldering turn as a revenge-seeking troubadour in Robert Rodriguez’s “Desperado.” Banderas raises considerable steam with his Mexican leading lady, Salma Hayek. The movie is a $6 million sequel to Rodriguez’s $7,000 “El Mariachi,” and it would seem fresher if it were not a virtual replay of the original. Rodriguez is a bona fide talent: he concocts gleefully virtuoso mayhem that pops off the screen like a Road Runner cartoon. A comedy of pain painted in make-believe blood, “Desperado” is fun for half the distance, but the delights of watching bad (and good) guys coming to ever more explosive ends wear thin. Still, the movie’s a great showcase for Banderas’s soulful, and soulfully funny, swash-buckling. He invests this action role with a flamenco dancer’s grace and a brooding sensuality that has inspired comparison to Valentino.
Actually, all the screen Latin-lover comparisons–to Cesar Romero, Fernando Llamas, Gilbert Roland–seem off the mark and out of date. They were peacocks whose martinet machismo now seems anachronistic. Banderas is more leonine and internal: he may ooze sexuality, but he holds something sly in reserve. Opposite Brad Pitt in “Interview with the Vampire,” his gravely powerful Armand effortlessly took command of the screen. In “Miami Rhapsody,” romancing both a mother (Mia Farrow) and her daughter (Sarah Jessica Parker), he showed his deft comic touch, as if surprised that women found him so attractive. And he imbued his small role as Tom Hanks’s lover in “Philadelphia” with the same unself-conscious romantic commitment, fiery but thoughtful, that he brings to his heterosexual love stories.
Banderas wasn’t the main attraction in these movies. But this was the price he was willing to pay to try to become the first leading man from Spain to break through in Hollywood. In Spain, after such Almodovar hits as “Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down? he was a huge star. And he worked at a nonstop clip. At the age of 35, he’s already made 43 movies. “I don’t know if I’m gonna win an Oscar,” he jokes, “but I’m gonna be in the Guinness Book of Records.”
Con man: In the next six months, Banderas will be everywhere. He plays a small role, again for Rodriguez, in the anthology movie “Four Rooms.” He’ll be a scurvy hit man in the Sylvester Stallone action movie “Assassins.” He’s completed two other films: a psychological thriller called “Never Talk to Strangers,” opposite Rebecca De Mornay, for director Peter Hall (“disturbing and weird,” says Banderas) and a comedy “in the classic Billy Wilder style” called “Two Much,” directed by his countryman Fernando Trueba (“Belle Epoque”). In that one, he plays a con man masquerading as twins who romances Melanie Griffith and Daryl Hannah.
As if that weren’t enough, he’s about to fly to London to record the songs for the long-delayed movie of “Evita,” which will start filming in January under Alan Parker’s guidance. Banderas is Che to Madonna’s Evita–casting that raised the eyebrows of anyone who saw the 1991 documentary “Truth or Dare,” in which the Material Girl announced her desire to seduce Banderas, only to have her hopes dashed when he appeared with his wife, Ana Leza.
“I’m gonna slow down,” he vows. Maybe yes, maybe no. Because after “Evita” he’ll probably play the title role in a Steven Spielberg-produced remake of “Zorro.” Robert Rodriguez is being courted to direct. These movies are a far cry from the art-house fare he made in Spain. “When I do this kind of movie I feel like a kid, I come back to my early years playing Indians and cowboys with my brother in Malaga. ‘It’s fun–once in a while.” But he insists he’ll return to Spanish movies and less mainstream ventures. A movie buff who talks with enthusiasm of Lubitsch, Wilder and Bunuel, he excitedly mentions a possible project about the visionary French movie director Jean (“L’Atalante”) Vigo.
What bothers him about Hollywood–where he actually spends little time – is that everybody talks business, not art. “I hate that! I hate that!” he leans forward, and gestures with his hands to emphasize his point. “You go to dinner and they talk about money. Such bad taste!”
Funny and loquacious, he seems utterly unlike his American counterparts in the heartthrob category, who tend to preen or hide behind a mask of pretentious solemnity. Banderas doesn’t have that defensive, me-against-the-world attitude so many young American actors possess, and maybe that’s why he’s such a convincing romantic figure on screen. Banderas actually connects to his costars: sparks are struck.
Off screen, his chemistry with Melanie Griffith is just as clear. This morning, she joins him on the patio, wearing a bathrobe and no makeup. Both are about to catch a plane for North Carolina, where she’s playing the mother–the Shelley Winters role–in the remake of “Lolita.” “I love you,” she says, nuzzling him. “I love you,” he says back, despite the fact a reporter is standing in their midst.
Banderas is discovering the cost of his growing stardom: tabloids around the world have had a feeding frenzy with their romance, begun on the set of “Two Much” in Miami. In Spain recently, packs of journalists trailed them everywhere. He’s wounded by the attacks on Melanie’s admitted past problems with alcohol abuse, and by the Spanish press’s charge that he left his wife for a celebrity to gain status in Hollywood. “I’m not silly, I’m not an idiot. I love her with everything she brings to it. She has nothing to hide,” he says. Even his father, a former policeman in Malaga, has been hounded by photographers. “Oh! I’m sorry, I’m sorry, Pop!” he mock wails. Banderas can laugh at his own improbable predicament. “I cannot bear people without a sense of humor, people that take seriously everything,” he says. He has no regrets about the course his career has taken in Hollywood. “I’m living the adventure of my life. Now it’s here, tomorrow I don’t know.” And where does he consider home? “Nowhere,” he shrugs. But, he can always be found these days. Just go to the movies.
