Antonio Banderas on working again with Pedro Almodovar

Antonio Banderas is working again with Pedro Almodovar on “La piel que habito” (“The Skin I Live In”):

I just needed it after so many years in America. They make beautiful movies there but they play it safer. Maybe it's because of the money that's involved, but for a director like Pedro, money is just for creation, it's about exploring and experimentation. Experimenting is a forbidden word in the United States. You say, ‘It's an experimental movie,' and you're kicked out.”

On his latest character,

Pedro wanted me to show the monster within, to play the character so that even when I am doing terrible things, I would seem like a family doctor prescribing aspirin.”

on Pedro Almodovar,

He is a genre in himself. It used to happen with directors like Fellini, that you would explain away what you see as, ‘oh, it's a Fellini film'. The same thing now happens with Almodovar. I think it's priceless in our day when so much cinema is just a pattern.”

“He is not as baroque as he used to be. He is more profound in certain ways, more serious, more solid as a director. But he still has the same engine – the same alive personality. Sometimes I feel he is almost suicidal on what he is trying to achieve on screen. I kept saying on set, ‘Can I do that? Can I really just go out there and put my arm inside the mouth of this lion?'”

“I enjoy my profession, and a movie can serve many purposes. But by working again with Pedro, it was refreshing. It was to get out of the pattern I have been playing for the last 20 years and to do something where I recognise my roots and the taste of acid in my mouth. It's the bitter but good taste of danger when you're going to places you've never been before.”

interview extrapolated from BBC News

Gramilano( Editor )

Graham Spicer is a writer, director and photographer in Milan, blogging (under the name ‘Gramilano') about dance, opera, music and photography for people “who are a bit like me and like some of the things I like”. He was a regular columnist for Opera Now magazine and wrote for the BBC until transferring to Italy.

His scribblings have appeared in various publications from Woman's Weekly to Gay Times, and he wrote the ‘Danza in Italia' column for Dancing Times magazine.