Banderas shows age directing first Spanish film
From Elisabeth O’Leary

MADRID—It is hard to picture Hollywood’s favourite Latin hunk as the director behind “El Camino de los Ingleses” (“The English Path”), which opens in Spain this week.
Antonio Banderas’ second turn as a director is a far cry from cinematic romps like “The Mask of Zorro,” “Spy Kids” or the other box-office hits which made him a household acting name. Instead, he’s created a chronicle about the bewildering path to manhood in Spain.
“It’s my age!” one of Spain’s biggest international film stars told a news conference. “I’m becoming more pensive and I can imagine myself better behind a camera than in front of it.” The Spanish language film tells the story of a group of teenage boys on the threshold of maturity, their loves and conflicts as they try to understand their transition to adults.
Banderas says the movie is an attempt to bring something more personal and risky to the big screen, but also to provide a springboard for a new generation of local actors in Malaga, his home city in southern Spain. The 46-year-old director said he tried to ignore the preconceptions that actors and directors impose on a film in the attempt to make a box office and critical hit.
“I tried to cut out those (restraints). I don’t know if I’ve done it as a reaction to the 17 years that I’ve spent working in Hollywood. Anyway, I’m not giving up on those 17 years which undoubtedly gave me this possibility to buy freedom.”
Banderas’ hugely successful acting career was launched primarily in the films of Oscar-winning Spanish director Pedro Almodovar in the 1980s. Since then he has been in a wealth of box office hits including a voiceover in “Shrek 2.” His first big commercial success in English was in Jonathan Demme’s Oscar-winning 1993 film “Philadelphia,” which starred Tom Hanks as a lawyer with AIDS.