The L.A. Film Festival honored one of their own this week with a special night at the Billy Wilder Theater set aside for co-chair Antonio Banderas.
The conversation, led by actress Elizabeth Pena, covered the actor’s career including working with directors Pedro Almodovar, Robert Rodriguez and his wife Melanie Griffith (who was seated in the audience).
Hollywood.com was in attendance to get you the highlights! Here’s what Banderas had to say …
On theater vs. movies:
“Theater and movies are different to me because in movies you are in the middle of the process. After you give your best work somebody else is going to come in and cut it. There is going to be some music that you didn’t know was going to be there…you aren’t really in control of the process. But in theater you are the process.”
On his wife Melanie:
“I admired my wife before I loved her, as an actress. I saw her while I was still living in Spain. Working Girl … for me Melanie is one of the most important comedy actors of the 80s. I think she is fabulous. When I saw this script [for Crazy in Alabama] there was nobody in my mind except her. It was a pressure to direct her and it is something I would love to do again.”
On his daughter Stella getting into acting:
“I wouldn’t encourage. I would help her as much as I can and advise her as much as I know. I would try but I wouldn’t push her to be an actress…it is a complex profession, which [requires you to] play with yourself. Like if you have an instrument…but you are you. And then you start questioning things about yourself. So it is a very introspective and not everybody is prepared for that. People lose their minds.” [PAGEBREAK]
On his introduction to the work of Robert Rodriguez:
The first time I saw him, Sony pictures called me at the time and said we would like you to see this movie called El Mariachi. So I saw the movie and I was totally fascinated by what I saw. Then when I finished watching it somebody from the studio came to me and said, ‘Did you know this movie was done with $5,000?’ I said ‘What? That’s impossible. They are a bunch of actors there, there are traveling shots.’ They said, ‘Those weren’t traveling shots, that was done with a wheelchair.’ I said, but all of those actors? And he told me this story, [Robert] went to a place in Antonio, Texas, a hospital in which they pay $500 to each one of those guys to test a new medicine against cholesterol. They were for five days in this hospital and they did the casting with all of those people. He said, ‘Do you want to do a movie?’ and they said ‘sure.’ He said ‘Okay, you’re in the movie.’ El Mariachi was done like that, with all those people, with imagination, with a camera he borrowed from somebody, with wheelchairs. With nothing.
On making Spy Kids with Robert:
I remember with the first Spy Kids, I was in Paris shooting a movie and he called and said, do you want to come to Austin, Texas in three weeks, we’re going to start making a movie. I said ‘Where’s the script?’ He said, ‘we don’t have the script yet.’ I said ‘You don’t have a script and in three weeks we are going to start making a movie?’ He said ‘Yeah, I’m going to go to Sony and pitch this idea.’ And he went and then called me back and said ‘We are starting in three weeks’…Spy Kids was almost like an amusement park because he invited all the kids of everybody who was working, so we had clowns, and musicians there, the kids of the extras, the kids of the stunt guys. He just made the entire thing something different, we were not shooting a movie it was something different which was a lot of fun. I love the guy. [PAGEBREAK]
On working with director Pedro Almodovar:
“I prefer to be in a creative hell than to be having fun and nothing comes out of it. He is very demanding. He is a leader in every single department…he is not only a director, he has an opinion about colors, about lenses, about actors, about dresses, anything has to pass through this filter which makes him someone with something to say and a strong personality.”
On ageism in Hollywood:
“Hollywood is sometimes a little bit cruel with women, with age. It is a little bit hard to say this but it is almost like a factory where they need fresh flesh. That’s not fair because there is a lot of talent. I’m not only talking about my wife now, a number of actresses who have crossed 40 or 50 and been relegated to another place and it is not fair.”
On directing vs. acting:
“I am going to say something that might sound weird, but you become God. You create a world out of your hands…when I go as a director I’m not even thinking of money…for me directing is absolutely personal, which is not in acting form. In acting you could be described as an interpreter, you act, you interpret…I don’t know if this is something I can do in Hollywood, this is something I have to do in places where I am allowed to do so.”
