Antonio Banderas

Antonio Banderas is a Spanish actor whose four-decade career has made him one of the most-iconic Spanish-language leading actors in international cinema. He was born José Antonio Domínguez Bandera on August 10, 1960, in Málaga, Andalusia, Spain. He attended the School of Dramatic Art in Málaga and joined Madrid's National Theatre in his early twenties.

His career began with the Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar, whose 1986 film Matador launched the Almodóvar-Banderas collaboration that defined his early career. The pair worked together on Law of Desire (1987), Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988, the 1988 Spanish-language Best Foreign Language Film Oscar nominee), Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! (1990), and The Skin I Live In (2011) — making Banderas one of the Almodóvar repertory faces of late-20th-century Spanish cinema.

His Hollywood crossover came with Robert Rodriguez's Desperado (1995, the mariachi sequel) and continued through major American studio films: Evita (1996, opposite Madonna), The Mask of Zorro (1998), The Legend of Zorro (2005), the four Spy Kids films (2001–2011), and the Puss in Boots voice role across the Shrek franchise (2004–2010) and the Puss in Boots: The Last Wish (2022). His Best Actor Oscar nomination came for Pedro Almodóvar's Pain and Glory (2019) — his first Oscar nomination after three and a half decades of major film work.

Banderas survived a serious heart attack in 2017 and shifted his work since to focus on producing, directing, and theater work in his native Málaga. He launched the Soho Caixabank Theatre in Málaga in 2018 — a major Spanish-theater venture that has continued to mount ambitious productions through the 2020s. He has been with Dutch actress Nicole Kimpel since 2014, following his 1996–2014 marriage to American actress Melanie Griffith.

His name Antonio is from the Latin Antonius, an old Roman family name of uncertain etymology, anchored in Christian tradition through Saint Anthony of Padua. Antonio has been continuously among the most-popular Spanish-American boys' names for over a century.