Antonio Banderas Rates His Dancing Skills: “Bad. I'm not a good dancer. I’m not even a dancer. I'm just an actor who pretends to dance and that’s all. Because I’m not a swordfighter, either. Or a horse rider or any of those things that I have done in my life that has to do with the physicality.
I think I am good at moving. I think I am good at learning choreography. But it's just pretending in film. If I go to a place to do… In fact, in rehearsal I can do it. In fact, I did it on Broadway which I did every night for 238 performances and I didn’t drop her off and I got my eyes blindfolded too (laughing). But I am not a dancer and that's the truth.”
Banderas only began dancing when it was necessary for a role. “Just since I had to do it in a movie for the first time, which I think was Mambo Kings. After that I did Evita with Madonna and I did another movie in Spain called The Court of the Pharaoh many years ago and I danced, too. But as I told you, it's one of the tools I can do for my acting career, but I never took classes. I never went to school or anything like that. I just learned the choreographies in whatever movie that I am.”
Bonding with the Cast of Take the Lead: Banderas went as far as to invite the young actors to his home to bond. “It was because I wanted to bond with them and because I want them to bond to each other too. So I talked to the director and I said to her, ‘Do you mind if I do these things, invite them for dinner?’ She said, ‘No, I love this. Absolutely.’ So it just happened every Saturday night when we didn’t have anything to do on Sunday, all of them together. It was beautiful, put on some music, talk about this, tell stories. We had a lot of fun and that is very important. For a movie like that it’s very important.
I have to do the same process with my movie in Spain because it’s also a movie of coming of age. Way harder than this, totally different in the way that it’s dark and it’s very sexual. But I had to do the same thing, the same process. So I brought the kids three weeks before principal photography in Malaga, put them in a hotel and I made them do a lot of activities together. And in two weeks, they were [close]. And still, they called me yesterday when I was coming here. They called me from Madrid and they were all having dinner together. They keep going.”
