Antonio Banderas

Born of a policeman father and a teaching mother, Antonio Banderas attended, as a teenager, the courses of the dramatic art school of Malaga, before joining at the age of 21 the company of the National Theater of Spain. In 1982, Pedro Almodovar offered him his first film role, that of a homosexual thug in The Labyrinth of Passions. From this meeting was born a fruitful collaboration, the two men subsequently turning Matador (1986), The Law of Desire (1987), Women on the verge of a nervous breakdown (1988) and Tie me up! (1989).

Starified in Spain, Antonio Banderas set out to conquer Hollywood in the 90s. Archetype of the Latin lover, he plays the lover of Tom Hanks in Philadelphia (1993), stands out alongside Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise in the fantastic Interview with a Vampire (1994) and plays the Assassins opposite Sylvester Stallone in 1995. But it is thanks to the director Robert Rodriguez that the actor occupies for the first time the headliner of an American production, in the Desperado occurrence (1995). The two men will never leave each other, meeting in particular on the sets of the sequel Once Upon a Time in Mexico Desperado 2 (2003) and the Spy Kids trilogy (2001-2004).

In addition to El Mariachi and Agent Gregorio Cortez, Antonio Banderas is associated with another mythical character: that of Zorro. In 1998 and 2005, he displayed with panache the panoply of the famous masked vigilante in The Mask of Zorro and its sequel The Legend of Zorro, both directed by Martin Campbell. In 1996, he married the American actress Melanie Griffith, the result of love at first sight on the set of the comedy Two much. The two lovebirds will have the opportunity to work together in 1999 on The Head in the Hat Box, directed by Antonio Banderas.

Another success to his credit: the musical Evita with Madonna in 1996. However, from the end of the 90s, times became more difficult and the handsome Hidalgo accumulated some critical and commercial disappointments with The 13th Warrior (1999), Sin original (2001), Femme fatale (2002) or the action film Ballistic (2003). Despite everything, he keeps the confidence of DreamWorks studios thanks to which he can lend his voice to Puss in Boots in the animated film Shrek 2 (2004) as well as in its sequels Shrek the Third (2007) and Shrek 4, It Was an End. (2010), and in the spin off entirely devoted to the famous feline. In 2003, he also made a small appearance in Julie Taymor's Frida, produced and performed by her friend Salma Hayek.

Despite this great success in animation, the actor struggles to find major roles and multiplies the forgettable films: he successively gives the answer to Emma Thompson in Disappearances (2005), to Jennifer Lopez in The Forgotten of Juarez (2007) , to Meg Ryan in My Favorite Spy (2008) and to Liam Neeson in The Other Man, all of whom have suffered bitter critical failures. After this crossing of the desert, Banderas nevertheless found several great directors: he held one of the enigmatic roles of You will meet a beautiful and dark stranger by Woody Allen, presented at the Cannes Film Festival, then finds Pedro Almodóvar for La Piel que Habito, screened on the Croisette in 2011. In this overwhelming drama, he appears in the guise of a surgeon obsessed with his own experiments on human skin. In the meantime,

From then on, the career of Antonio Banderas takes a new turn marked by eclecticism; the actor is equally at home in the unbridled action film Machete Kills by Robert Rodriguez, in Almodovar's wacky comedy The Passing Lovers, in the blockbuster Expendables 3 alongside Stallone and Schwarzy or in the aerial drama and experimental Knight of Cups, signed Terrence Malick. After a quick return to animation dubbing with SpongeBob SquarePants the film: A hero comes out of the water, Antonio Banderas is more discreet on the screens; it is however expected in several projects in 2017 (Black Butterfly by Brian Goodman, Salty by Simon West and Security by Alain Desrochers).