Antonio Banderas reunited with iconoclastic Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodovar for the first time in 20 years for The Skin I Live In. Their earlier collaborations — five in all — played out as comedies, dramas and romances, all with twists and turns we now know to be pure Almodovar.
But, together again, they explore a very different world: dark and dangerous territory, in which an amoral man, obsessed with his own importance, rebuilds a human being. It could be described as a kinky horror film with a sleek and charming protagonist on a mission of revengeand “scientific” learning. AskMen spoke with Banderas in Toronto about this wicked character.
Did you dare to try to feel the way your character felt?
Antonio Banderas: No, never! I never did that when I played it. We have seen that many times, the guy in Austria who held his daughter for 20 years and had six kids with her. And these journalists started interviewing neighbors and friends, and they all said he was a great guy. He was a wonderful man, went to church every Sunday, and look at what he did.
These guys melt perfectly into their environment; they’re difficult to detect. What I couldn’t do was to put a backpack with all the psychopathy, this hump behind me to carry on, so what I did is just to be very much in time. Every day, I went to the set thinking I was a family doctor, like when I played the scene with the dildos, like you are just prescribing pills. Take two in the morning, two in the afternoon, and in a month you are going to be perfect. If I [played him], I would go exactly where Pedro did not want me to go. I would be commenting on him continuously and be bad in front of the camera.
He want[ed] me to be detached. There was a difficulty of the character to think how detached I am. He’s putting this fire on her skin! He doesn’t give a damn. It’s just what he’s doing. Pedro said to me to be economical, minimalistic: ‘Antonio, I want you to be a white screen in which the audience can put all their fears. If you show the monster, the movie is done because you have the parameters; you have something to lose.’
You see, the fear we all have in our brains is way bigger than anything that a guy in Hollywood can do. It doesn’t work, because this is what matters. If we present this character in a white screen, it creates the next step; he was right with that. The movie belongs to Pedro’s universe. There were certain concessions, but this fiction here what he does is not possible. It is possible to do it, but not the results. In 30 years, maybe. So you have to have a certain amount of letting yourself go, and the act of faith he asked of me, the audience has to…to understand that they are seeing something that is related to Frankenstein and Gothic movies with a castle and issues. It’s a movie; it’s an affliction.
It’s interesting how your character orchestrates her every move.
AB: There is a big screen in the bedroom, where [my character] can watch the cameras on her and go in with the close-ups and a boom. He’s directing his own movie and creation, and eventually he jumps in the other side and he’s in his own movie. It’s the dangers of creation and dangers of beauty, and he’s looking for perfection until the end, when he wants to get in bed with her — a big mistake.
You said working with Pedro on this was like doing Shakespeare and that it became a telenovela.
AB: You feel like you’re in the altitudes with Shakespeare in a scene, and three minutes after, you are playing a soap opera from Mexico and everything in between.
It is what it is. He creates his own universe, and you have to understand it and to work with Pedro. It doesn’t matter the skills you have as an actor. Very specifically, you have to take a leap of faith and believe in him, because sometimes he just pushes you to the limits — you feel vertigo of his creation. He basically doesn’t allow you to use the thing you’ve take in your life. You come with a suitcase with things you have used in your career, and he throws that out of the window!
When you’re feeling very comfortable with an actor, you are doing nothing. You can be acceptable to an audience, but five minutes after you leave the theater, they forget you and the character. With Pedro, that doesn’t happen. He puts you in a delicate place and can be very painful because you feel your own insecurities hitting you, and you cannot use things you have used in the past. That is the territory where he defies the laws of cinematic gravity. I remember feeling that when we worked together in the ’80s. He always managed to take these huge leaps and flip in the air, and it’s unbelievable to me that he can go that far.
He never worked for the masses. He worked for a number of individuals who get together in the movie theater. He hates that massive mainstream thing. He pukes when he feels that thing. To me, as an actor, I recognize movies may serve many different purposes, and as an actor I have a menu. I can’t ask a guy who has been working on the road under the sun to go to see 8 1/2 on the weekend. He feels [he] wants to take his girlfriend and a big bucket of popcorn and watch Zorro or Puss in Boots — and that’s legitimate if you’re giving him something that is honest and presenting something you know he’s buying.
You share the time almost equally with Elena Anaya. You really had to trust her.
Antonio Banderas: I know it’s cheesy when they praise the actors, but this girl is unbelievable. She’s magnificent. I have seen her in other movies too.
As a person, she is a trooper. This is a woman who spent hours on makeup in torrid summer outside of Toledo, and not one complaint.
She was always there. If she saw me depressed or thinking too much, she’d be there to buck you up. And I did the same with her — ping-pong game. For me, it’s sacred, like a sister — no one touches her. I bring Puss in Boots and slash them! Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh!
What do you look for in scripts?
AB: I look for different things — sometimes the script, director or actor I wanted to work with.
Three years ago, I moved agencies, and there was a man there, Ed Limato, a legend who died this year. He said to me, the most important word in Hollywood is “no,” and you have to learn that.
I practice. You have to work with people you really love. Not big characters, but good enough to express myself as an actor with Woody Allen, then Spielberg and Almodovar. So the last two and a half years, I started doing things I love, and I feel calmer than I used to feel before, less anxious to get somewhere, [less like] Hollywood is kicking your ass — boom, boom, boom! — and you have to go somewhere, and that somewhere doesn’t exist.
When you realize that, you calm down and things start to happen, because things start coming in a more natural way. I’m enjoying my profession much more than I did four years ago. I am going to produce and direct and jump on theater — my natural turf — and then the anxiousness disappeared.
Your mother didn’t like your early pictures. Is she OK with this?
AB: Mother went to the theater with a bunch of friends, and they had a tea party, and it was like, “What the hell is that!?” But she learned to like them.
For this one, I think she is too old. I don’t think she is going to catch the whole thing. She will have problems following it. If she thinks I am handsome, she’s OK. “Oh, he’s so handsome” — that’s it.
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