Antonio Banderas is back as Puss this month in Puss In Boots: The Last Wish, which begs the question – are there any other roles from his now 40-year career (he made his his film debut in Pedro Almodóvar’s Labyrinth of Passion back in 1982) that he would revisit?
“Well, some of those characters I can’t, because my age wouldn’t allow me, unless the characters grew like I did!” he laughs “Actually, no, I have characters that I have revisited before; I did a couple of Desperado [films] and the Shrek series and then with Puss in Boots…”
Speaking of Puss, The Last Wish marks the fifth time Banderas has played the character (if we’re ignoring any short movies) and, coincidentally, it’s also a reunion with his Desperado co-star Selma Hayak who plays Kitty Softpaws (the second time she’s played this character).
In fact, Banderas has played Puss for two decades now and it’s a character he’d continue playing if he had the chance.
“If Puss in Boots comes again, which is possible, I would do it,” he says. “I would be more than happy! [I would] look for how to just give him a different colour a different flair, and stay with him.”
Beyond Puss, Banderas tells us he’s looking for new characters in his career. “I want new things,” he nods. “New things, and characters that are actually my age, which is a fantastic age for actors, because I can reflect on things that I couldn’t before. I was just too young to get into the skin of characters that are now very interesting to me from an intellectual point of view.”
Part of his journey into playing new characters is with Teatro del Soho, the theatre he has opened up in his home town of Málaga. “Before, I didn’t have the opportunity to be offered that type of character in movies and in theatre, which is what I am doing now with my theatre project – I’m looking for those types of characters that I couldn’t play before, because nobody offered them me, I [now] offer those characters to myself.”
However, Banderas does admit that he could be tempted to revisit a certain masked, sword-swishing character if he story was right.. “Somebody is talking about Zorro again… I will visit it, if Zorro is my age now and is a completely different character than the one that I did.”
Puss In Boots: The Last Wish in in cinemas on 3 February
