PASADENA, Calif. _ Spanish actor Antonio Banderas loves a mystery. And he couldn't find a puzzle more suited to him than his latest project. Banderas is playing artist Pablo Picasso in National Geographic's 10-part continuation of its "Genius" series.
"We are talking about an extraordinary, capable, skillful guy," says Banderas. "His personal life is perfect to dramatize because it's very complex. For me, it's a mystery. And I am not trying to unplug the mystery.
"Actually, I love to be part of it, and probably at the end of the show, we are not going to have an explanation of why he did this or that, or he didn't do this, or he didn't say that. We are going to continue being in that mystery. But that is the point. That is the point of his extraordinary art. That is actually what makes the whole entire project, for me, unbelievably exciting," he says.
Banderas, who goes gray and bald for the role, says conjuring such a vivid portrayal isn't a one-man job. "You do the character with all the forces _ human forces _ that you have around, and those are fellow actors, and those are the makeup artists, and they are the cinematographer and directors, and everybody who is involved. We are in the same boat trying to get to the same objective and do the same thing ... It has been one of the most extraordinary, exciting projects that I have ever done in my life."
Not only does he share a Spanish heritage with Picasso, he was also born in Malaga, the same town as the celebrated artist. "Picasso has been a very important figure in my life," says the 57-year-old.
"You have to think when I was going to school, when I was a little kid with the hand of my mother, we always cross in front of Picasso's house where Picasso was born. And I am talking about a time in Spain in which we didn't have too many international heroes. So Picasso trespassed that barrier at a time in which we were pretty much isolated by the dictatorship that we were living in with Francisco Franco in power," he recalls.
"He was bigger than Franco, and his shadow was coming to Spain. So I grew up with this projection of this huge artist who was capable to actually make the people all around the world fall in love with his art, and he was (from) my hometown, and I was able to just see the house where he was born. That was very important for me."
Actually, Banderas, who was so memorable in films like "The Mask of Zorro," "Desperado" and four "Spy Kids" movies, has been offered the role of Picasso several times before. He always turned them down. Now he says, the timing was ideal.
"I said no before because it was a big sense of responsibility that it came to me that are, for whatever reason, I didn't want to accept in other times of my life. But this is the right time. It came with great scripts, with seriousness, with National Geographic, which was giving the whole entire project all the facts that we needed to create the complexity of a character like this, so that's what we are doing."
When Banderas first arrived in the United States, he was already a big star in the Latin community and had made five movies with well-known director Pedro Almodovar. "When I came to America, I didn't have in the mind the idea of developing a career in America," he says.
"In fact, I went back to Spain and worked awhile there. Then I started going back and forth. Then Melanie (Griffith, who became his second wife) came along. She had two kids. They had fathers. Somebody had to make a decision. I didn't like the idea of having the kids travel 50,000 miles, all around the world in 10 weeks, so that's why I moved to America. It was more a personal reason than a professional."
Banderas' self-deprecating charisma soon attracted such avid attention in the States that he became the darling of the fanzines and paparazzi.
But he's not interested in being a one-note hottie. Joking, he describes his days as "limos, very expensive suits and champagne every morning."
"I don't believe in the parallel lives of being an actor," he sighs. "What I believe in is just what I was searching for many years, and it starts when someone is telling you 'action' and when someone is telling you 'cut.' That's the point. That's what I've been working my whole life to be in. All these parallel lives, this is a dangerous lie," he shakes his head.
"If you play that game, and you want to appear a star 24 hours a day, first you have to be brilliant. And to be brilliant 24 hours a day is work. And I am not brilliant 24 hours a day."
AZARIA VOICES A SLEW OF ODDBALL CHARACTERS
Folks who recognize actor Hank Azaria as the loopy baseball announcer in "Brockmire," which returns to IFC on Wednesday, may not know he's a big voice-over guy. On "The Simpsons" alone he plays a candy box assortment of characters, including Moe the bartender, Police Chief Wiggum, convenience store operator Apu and the dorky Comic-Book Guy. "It might surprise you how much energy it actually takes to do a vocal performance," says Azaria.
"You have to do it with your whole body, sort of have to act it with your whole body, or else it doesn't come out good. That's not really eloquent, but that's true. And it's so concentrated. In the course of a day, 'Brockmire' had a progressive schedule. Like, we'll shoot 10 pages a day. When you record (a voice-over), which is a 12-hour day, it's long and strenuous. When you are only vocal recording, I can only do it for two or three hours at a time because it's pure concentrated.
"You don't have to stop. You don't have to wait for people to light (the scene). You are just doing take after take after take, scene after scene after scene, and it gets my voice, it's done after a couple of hours. And you get your whole self into it. You do the hokey-pokey, and you turn yourself about, and that's really what it's all about, I think."
FIENNES RETURNS TO 'HANDMAID'S TALE'
"The Handmaid's Tale" returns to Hulu Wednesday, a further look at the fascinating dystopian society. Joseph Fiennes, who co-stars as Fred Waterford, the head of the household where Offred is a housemaid, recalls when he was a kid in his native England, he had no thought about acting.
"I was very outdoors, very outgoing, into the physical life. And I guess the earliest point that I can recollect acting taking hold of me _ although I did plays at school _ was probably at primary school when I was 7 or 8 maybe 9. And the teacher cast the play 'Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat,' and she very sweetly cast me as Joseph. I thought, "I'm called Joseph, and he's called Joseph, this is meant to be!'"
PBS SHOW TO PROBE UNSOLVED MYSTERIES
The mysteries behind human life, the makeup of the universe, the intricacies of animal communication and the ultimate IQ for artificial intelligence are all questions that will be probed in "NOVA"'s new show, "Wonders," premiering Wednesday on PBS. "We wanted to pick questions that are really active areas of research, and they're also questions that just everyone is fascinated by," says Julia Cort, executive producer of the series.
"And these are questions not only ordinary people wonder about, but scientists are wondering about them and struggling with them. So in this case, we're looking at questions that (are) basically, ultimately unanswered. Scientists are pushing the boundaries of our knowledge with these questions right now, and we really wanted to delve into the scientific process and meet the people who are on the front-lines trying to expand our knowledge of the universe. There are more questions, but we really loved these."
