Banderas Sings Praises of "Evita"
BIOG: NAME: UPD: 19970110 -TEXT-
MARINA DEL REY, Calif. - Although his part as Che in "Evita" is overshadowed by the title role played by Madonna, Antonio Banderas turns in a star performance .
Dressed nattily in black ribbed trousers and a navy mock turtleneck short-sleeved sweater, Banderas was delighted to talk about his part in the Andrew Lloyd Webber/Tim Rice musical.
Hollywood Pictures paid for reporters to fly to California, see "Evita" and interview the stars.
For once, the heavens smiled on me, and I was given a one-on-one interview with Banderas.
The Spanish actor, well-known and respected in his native country, made his American film debut in "Mambo Kings." He followed that role with parts in "Philadelphia," "Interview With the Vampire," "The House of the Spirits," "Desperado," "Assassins" and "Never Talk to Strangers."
He has sung before in "Mambo Kings" and "Desperado."
His role as Che in "Evita" is of the everyman who follows the career of Eva Duarte Peron.
Banderas worked with a vocal coach three days a week for six weeks to get his voice in shape for the role. His coach was the musical director of "The Phantom of the Opera," who traveled from New York City to North Carolina, where Banderas' wife, actress Melanie Griffith, was working on a project.
He also went to London and worked an additional week and a half before the actual recording started.
"The education that I had was closer to pop music, and at the same time I'm crazy about good classical music," he said. "My father inspired me to listen to Vivaldi and Mozart ... all the big ones."
Banderas enjoyed filming "Evita" but found it scary as well.
"We're talking about doing something that is new in a way," he explained, pausing frequently for the right words. "We lost the tradition of great musicals in Hollywood. I think the last big one was 'West Side Story.'
"The different elements and different characters that we had to use to do this movie was pretty difficult."
Banderas said perhaps the hardest part was that the entire soundtrack was recorded before the movie was ever shot. When they acted out the movie, they had to make sure the sound matched the actions.
"It made the whole thing pretty scary for an actor like me who is used to go to the set and improvise and bring from my improvisations what I wanted to do with the character," he said. "I knew when the camera was recording that it was not possible to do that. We were tied to what we were doing in London."
Banderas also laughingly complained about how sore he was from the swordplay required in his current project, "The Mask of Zorro." He is the title character.
"Basically it's going to be a comedy, an adventure movie for kids, with not so much violence," he said.
He credits the birth of his daughter Estella Del Carmen Banderas in September with making him more thoughtful .
"Now I'm thinking things I've never thought before, like making a movie for kids that will make them enjoy and jump around," he said. "I've always liked Zorro, he's the only Spanish hero who came from Hollywood."
His highly publicized relationship with Griffith exposed him to a bit of the same tabloid attention as Madonna has had, and he said he has seen incredible stories about himself appear everywhere.
"I've been naked in magazines, and it's not my body," he said shyly. "But with the Internet and the computer, you can't even sue those guys. They say they got the picture on the Internet."
As he talks, Banderas uses varied facial expressions and punctuates his sentences with his hands.
He is proud of his daughter, and of her half-Spanish and half-American heritage. He hopes she will be bilingual, as he talks to her in Spanish while his wife speaks English.
"I take the baby and I start to try to make for her little mind the sounds of the Spanish accent," he said.
"One of the things that I really love about America is it is a country where different religions, languages, and the people of different races and communities can live together in peace. That should be an example for the whole world," he said.
Archive ID: 672935
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