José Antonio Domínguez Bandera (born August 10, 1960), better known as Antonio Banderas, is a Spanish film actor and singer who has starred in high-profile Hollywood films including Assassins, Evita, Interview with the Vampire, Philadelphia, The Mask of Zorro and the Mariachi and Shrek sequels.
Early LifeBanderas was born in Málaga, Andalucia, southern Spain, the son of doña Ana Bandera, a school teacher, and José Domínguez, a policeman in the Guardia Civil. He also has a brother, Francisco. Banderas was raised as a Roman Catholic, but no longer follows the religion. He took his mother's surname as his stage name. He initially wanted to play football (soccer) professionally, but his dream ended when he broke his foot at age 14. As a young man, he traveled to Madrid, in order to make a career in the Spanish film industry.
Career in HollywoodHe subsequently moved to the U.S. and began appearing in American films; some of his earlier roles there included the 1992 film, The Mambo Kings, as well as a supporting role in the Oscar-winning 1993 film, Philadelphia. He appeared in several major Hollywood releases in 1995, including a starring role in the Robert Rodriguez-directed film, Desperado. In 1996, he starred alongside Madonna in Evita, an adaptation of the musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice in which he played the narrator, Che, a role originally played on Broadway by Mandy Patinkin. He also received critical praise for his role as the fictional Mexican masked swordsman, Zorro in the 1998 film The Mask of Zorro, for which he was the first Spanish actor to portray the character after over 80 years since Zorro's creation.
He has also frequently collaborated with his Once upon a time in Mexico director, Rodriguez (Desparado), who cast him in the Spy Kids film trilogy and the final installment in the "Mariachi" trilogy (which he appeared in with Johnny Depp), Once Upon A Time In Mexico. Banderas' sole credit as a director was the poorly-received Crazy in Alabama (1999), starring his wife Melanie Griffith.
His voice role as Puss in Boots in Shrek 2 and Shrek the Third made the character popular on the family film circuit. In 2005, he reprised his role as Zorro in The Legend of Zorro, though this was not as critically successful as the original. In 2006, he starred in Take the Lead, a high school-set movie in which he played a real-life ballroom dancing teacher. That year, he also received the L.A. Latino International Film Festival's "Gabi" Lifetime Achievement Award, on October 14.
He hosted Saturday Night Live's 600th episode (in season 31). The musical guest was Mary J. Blige. He performed a voice-over for a computer-animated bee which can be seen in the United States in television commercials for Nasonex, an allergy medication, and was seen in the 2007 Christmas advertising campaign for Marks & Spencer, a British retailer. He is being considered for the part of Hadrian in the in-production (as of February 2008) film Memoirs of Hadrian.
Personal LifeBanderas divorced his first wife, Ana Leza, and married actress Melanie Griffith, whom he met a year earlier when they shot Two Much. They have a daughter, Stella del Carmen Banderas Griffith, born in 1996, who appeared in the film Crazy in Alabama (1999), in which Griffith starred and which Banderas directed. He has invested his movie earnings in business marketing Andalusian products, which he promotes in Spain and the USA. He is a long time supporter of the Málaga CF and Real Madrid Football Club. While he speaks in his native Andalusian Spanish with his family and Spanish press, he switches to the Castilian pronunciation when playing non-Andalusian roles or when dubbing his Hollywood performances.
with catherine zeta-jones in mask of zorro