EXCLUSIVE: Antonio Banderas: Almodovar Pushed Us To Be 'Creatively Naked'

Antonio Banderas, 51, is getting an onslaught of acclaim for his role as the psychologically disturbed plastic surgeon Robert Ledgard in The Skin I Live In, but he credits director and visionary Pedro Almodovar for much of his stunning performance in the controversial film.

“You have to take a leap of faith,” Banderas said about working with Almodovar in an exclusive with Uinterview. “He’s a real creator …. So he prefers you to be naked from a creative point of view and start almost from scratch, from zero. That’s what he likes. He loves for you to reinvent yourself in front of the camera every time that he works with you, so that’s what we did this time.”

Banderas is also personally grateful for the opportunity to have worked with Almodovar for a second time since starring in the 1990 film Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! “He represents a lot in my professional life and in my personal life, too, because he opened spaces intensive of morality to understand the world we live in and he helped me to live better and to understand the world better.”

The Skin I Live In is currently playing in theaters. You can hear Banderas give voice to the titular character in the Shrek spinoff, Puss in Boots. Next he will appear in Steven Soderbergh‘s Haywire, also starring Channing Tatum, Michael Fassbender, Ewan McGregor, Michael Douglas, and Bill Paxton, hitting theaters early next year.

Click here to watch Uinterview’s exclusive with Banderas.