Banderas aims to expand directing career
BERLIN (Reuters) - Spanish actor Antonio Banderas said on Tuesday his second stint at the helm of a movie, a coming-of-age piece set in his native Malaga, had sharpened his appetite to spend more time directing.
Speaking at a news conference at the Berlin film festival after a screening of the film, in Spanish "El Camino de los Ingleses" and in English "Summer Rain", Banderas said he was also likely to be the writer on the next project he undertakes.
As an actor, he is known for his portrayal of Zorro and his voice role as Puss in Boots in "Shrek 2" and he made his debut as a director with 1999's "Crazy in Alabama", starring his wife, Melanie Griffith.
"Summer Rain" premiered in Spain in November and describes the loves and conflicts of a group of teenage boys in Malaga, southern Spain, in the late 1970s as they make the sometimes painful transition to adulthood.
"At this time in my life I feel much more myself when I am directing," Banderas, 46, told reporters.
"I don't want seven years to pass between this latest movie and the next one," he added. "Probably a realistic time for me would be two-and-a-half to three years."
"Summer Rain" is based on Antonio Soler's prize-winning Spanish novel and Banderas said the project was a deeply personal one inspired by his home town, his native country and his past. It is not in competition at Berlin.
Banderas also took on the challenge partly because he was tired of acting: "I don't want to say I renounce acting in movies. I want to continue doing them," he said. "But they were movies that didn't allow me to express everything I had inside."
"FEMME FATALE"
Wearing a white T-shirt and with his long, black hair tied back in a ponytail, Banderas explained how he had learned a great deal from many of the directors he had worked with.
"I don't try to follow any director in particular," he said, adding that he had closely observed Brian De Palma at work directing him in the 2002 film "Femme Fatale".
"Obviously, there are things from many directors that I have worked with over the years and I have done 75 movies so I have a lot of people to pick from," he said.
Banderas' hugely successful acting career was launched mainly in the films of Oscar-winning Spanish director Pedro Almodovar in the 1980s.
His first big success in English was in Jonathan Demme's 1993 film "Philadelphia" in which he played a lover of Tom Hanks' AIDS-infected lawyer.
Banderas said "Summer Rain" was part of a venture he had started with Spanish production company Green Moon which aims to help young actors and film makers.
"The project is not designed just to produce movies for me to direct. It's designed to also help people that don't have the opportunity to get behind the camera," he said.
"In 'Summer Rain' I was the producer too and we want to continue on that path," he added.
"We are inviting people to send us whatever they wrote, short movies they have done, anything they have done related to movies in order to give them the opportunity to make it work and to tell their story."
