Antonio Banderas on Pedro Almodóvar

Brut America

Antonio Banderas won Best Actor award at Festival de Cannes for his role in Pedro Almodóvar's movie "Dolor y Gloria". He's been friends with the Spanish filmmaker for more than 40 years. This is how it changed his life.

Transcript

00:00Hi, I'm Antonio Banderas for Brut.

00:04Working with Almodóvar is a luxury, really.

00:09We met back in the 80s.

00:12I did theatre in the Teatro María Guerrero de Madrid,

00:15in the National Dramatic Centre,

00:17with the daughter of the air of Calderón de la Barca.

00:19We were sitting in a coffee shop outside, before the show,

00:22and he arrived with a red briefcase.

00:25He sat in the group, there were some who knew him.

00:29It was very funny, I don't remember what he said,

00:31but I remember laughing with him.

00:33He was very fast, very ingenious.

00:35And when he left, he looked at me and said,

00:37you have a very romantic face,

00:39and you should do film at some point.

00:41And well, I asked who he was when he left.

00:44They told me, his name is Pedro Almodóvar,

00:46he has made one film, but he will not make more films.

00:48Having made eight films with him,

00:52can justify a whole career, really.

00:55That is, if I had only made the eight films

00:58with Pedro Almodóvar,

01:00that would be enough for me

01:02to have decided to be an actor in my life.

01:13It has been complicated, because it is a very personal film.

01:16It is already complicated when you are going to make a film

01:19about a character that exists or has existed.

01:23If the character is alive, it is even more complicated.

01:26But if he is directing the film,

01:29things become strange, among other things.

01:34But it has not been very beautiful,

01:37because it has been a confession, deep down,

01:41of very personal things that he needed to communicate

01:44in the best way he knows how to do it,

01:47which is making films.

01:53I did not want to imitate Pedro Almodóvar.

01:56It seemed to me that he had become a pill.

01:59I preferred to attack the character,

02:02I tell you, from the inside out.

02:04And that has required a job that passed,

02:07irrevocably,

02:10to kill Antonio Banderas.

02:13I found it very funny, in this film that we have made,

02:16that the character tells me,

02:18Antonio, you have to think, to interpret him,

02:21that he is always very drunk, very high,

02:24on drugs, heroin, cocaine.

02:27You have to work on that a lot, but it is not noticeable.

02:30And then he told me, he is always sore,

02:33his head hurts, he has migraines, his back hurts,

02:36he walks in one way, but it is not noticeable.

02:39And he told me at the end,

02:41you have to make me, Pedro Almodóvar,

02:45but that it is not noticeable.

02:48I owe him a lot because I started to work

02:51as an actor in the cinema,

02:54with him for the first time, in 1981.

02:57Not only at that time Almodóvar was a person

03:00who broke all the rules of the cinematographic game

03:03that existed in Spain and probably in the world,

03:06he broke all the rules of the cinematographic narration,

03:09but he was also a person

03:12who dared to break a series of social, moral rules

03:15that existed in post-francoist Spain.

03:18Therefore, it was not only a cinematographic learning,

03:21but really a life learning.

03:24And if there is a mentor in my professional life,

03:27that would be Pedro Almodóvar.

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