Weekend: Friends reunited: Pedro Almodovar made him a star. But then Hollywood beckoned and actor abandoned mentor. Twenty years on, they're back together - and boy does it feel good, says Antonio Banderas. Portraits: Nick Ballon

• Published in: The Guardian (London)
• Main Author: Brooks, Xan
• Format: Newspaper Article
• Language: English
• Published: London (UK) Guardian News & Media Limited 30.07.2011
• Subjects: Almodovar, Pedro; Banderas, Antonio; Griffith, Melanie; Ledgard, Robert
• ISSN: 0261-3077; 1756-3224

[Robert Ledgard], too, proved a tough nut to crack. [Antonio Banderas] plays him as stealthy, steely and all-but impassive - but this was not his first approach. "Rehearsing the film in [Pedro Almodovar]'s house, I figured, 'This guy is bigger than life, so I'm going to go big. Square my shoulders. Show off all my acting skills.' " And Pedro said, "No, we're not going that way, my friend. The story's told in the script, you don't need to push it. Hold your horses. Keep it minimalist.' " Banderas shrugs. "Well, he was right and I was wrong. Yet again, he gave me a lesson." How did all of this play back in Malaga? Were his parents aware of what he'd got himself into? He pulls a face. "Oh, they didn't like it all. Big fights with my mum - particularly my mum." He proceeds to mimic their exchanges. "Argh, my friends won't talk to me now! You hang out with punks!" Him: "They're not punks, mum, they're film-makers. They're breaking the rules." Her: "Breaking the rules? Breaking the rules?" Banderas shakes his head. "And then when I did Law Of Desire, oh man, that was pandemonium. I didn't go home for a year." Judged at face value, Banderas and [Melanie Griffith] make for an unlikely union: the earthy Spaniard with the avant-garde pedigree and the hyper-real, surgically enhanced daughter of Beverly Hills privilege. Banderas's character in The Skin I Live In is a maestro of the slice and dice; an expert in conjuring his patients into somebody new. Did this give him any qualms about Griffith's own experience under the surgeon's knife? "No, no, it's never bothered me," he says. "Because she'd already done it when I met her. That's who I knew. That's the face I accepted. But I don't have any moral issue with it, particularly. People can do what they want. If you want the face of a donkey, do it. I wouldn't do it myself. That's not because I'm so pure, just that I don't like that rictus smile. It would horrify me to look in the mirror and not see the person I know."