Antonio Banderas Interview

Are you a good rider?
Yes: we trained for a month this time. There were nine horses playing Tornado and each horse has a different skill. Some run very fast, some run alongside the train, some play drunk. We also had a couple more Antonios - a couple of guys who basically did acrobatics. Many of the stunts I did myself: all the swings that you see in the first part of the movie on the viaduct - that's basically me the whole time. But when you see Zorro jumping from one wall to the other and flipping in the air: that isn't me. I could have done that but, then again, I could have been here talking to you without teeth. That's why I didn't do it.

Were any swashbuckling movie heroes an inspiration for you?
For me the best is Gene Kelly in The Three Musketeers. That's one of the most unbelievable, beautiful, eye-popping movies I have seen in my life. It's very difficult to reproduce because you can tell he's a dancer. I mean he has fantastic, tremendous skills. He does things that are impossible to reproduce and we made this one with no special effects.

How come it took seven years to make a sequel to The Mask of Zorro?
I suppose that during all these years this movie has been seen enormously on DVD and video. It is the audience who opens the door for a sequel: there is no other way. Nobody makes a sequel of a fiasco. Will there be another Zorro, after this one? If we wait another seven years, no. I would have to play the character Anthony Hopkins played in the first one. I would have to get a new guy who would be my son, and train him. I don't know if that is going to happen. I know the studio bought the Isabel Allende book (Zorro: A Novel) but that's a prequel - that is going back in time. If the third movie was going to be a prequel I don't know if I would participate - I really don't know.

Like Zorro, it seems that you are something of a people's hero in Spain: you're taking a stand on behalf of young actors and filmmakers.
Young people I see in Andalusia don't have the tools to make movies. I would just like to give them the opportunity of shooting with a little bit more budget than they actually have. It is something that is really in my soul. I would like to provide people in my home town, Malaga, in the south of Spain, with those tools that I didn't have when I started - it's basically that. I started working when General Franco was still alive. I remember playing Bertolt Brecht, 14 years old, in a theatre and looking to the wings and seeing the shiny helmets of the cops. And when the curtain came down and we took the bow, we were arrested. We spent the whole night in the police station. That happened three or four times. We didn't have anything. Nothing. Just the money in our pockets in order to put together our play. So I would like to have a theatre in Malaga, with audio-visual facilities, and try to make connections with the Actors Studio - so they can come and give masterclasses, something very dynamic. I would like people to have the type of treatment that I didn't have. This is not a dream - it is actually happening. I have the plans in my hands.