A-list actor Antonio Banderas says when he came to Hollywood in the early 1990s, he was told black and Hispanic actors can only play the bad guys. But he broke that stereotype almost immediately.
Banderas told the Times of London that Hollywood suits told him not to expect to get hero roles. But it wasn’t long before he was cast as the sword-wielding hero in the 1998 action flick, The Mask of Zorro.
“They said, ‘You are here, like the Blacks and the Hispanics, to play the bad guys,’” Banderas told the paper. “The problem was a few years later I had a mask, hat, sword and cape and the bad guy was Captain Love, who was blond and had blue eyes.”
“Even more important is Puss in Boots, because it’s for young kids,” Banderas continued. “They see a cat that has a Spanish, even an Andalusian accent and he’s a good guy.”
Banderas spent the first part of his career making films and TV shows in his native Spain, but in 1992 he got his first notable break in the U.S. with the 1992 flick The Mambo King. He went on to win non-villain roles in Philadelphia, Interview with a Vampire, and Desperado.
But The Mask of Zorro was one of the actor’s biggest early hits, grossing $250 million at the box office on a budget of less than $100 million. The film also sparked a 2005 sequel, The Legend of Zorro.
While Banderas is proud of having broken out of the Hispanic villain role that he was told he would be relegated to, he also notes that he has left Hollywood behind after a heart attack sent him to reexamine his life.
Banderas says that he had a massive heart attack in 2017 that he now says was a “serious warning,” that “changed the way I look at life.”
After the health scare, the Paddington in Peru actor said he quit smoking, sold his private jet, and moved back to his native country, adding, “Faced with death, it made me look back and realize that I am, in fact, a theatre actor.”
He noted that he is still doing movies, but he is also now running a non-profit theater , the Teatro del Soho, in Málaga, Spain. “I have never been so happy,” he said of his new venture.
Banderas added that the heart attack, while scary, was reversible, though he did undergo an operation to place three stents in his arteries.
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