Antonio Banderas was about to throw in the towel on his idea of making a career in the theater in Madrid – he was sleeping on the sofa at a friend’s house – when he found Alicia Moreno on the stairs of the old cafeteria of the María Guerrero Theater , who was then working at the National Dramatic Center. She suggested that she audition with Lluís Pasqual. “As soon as I saw it I realized that it had something special,” the Catalan director has always said. Banderas made his debut shortly after in ‘Diálogo del amargo’. The rest is history.
Soon the cinema snatched the actor from the theater. Pedro Almodóvar’s films gave him international notoriety and Madonna’s impudent confession in the documentary ‘In bed with Madonna’ ended up pushing him towards Hollywood, where with a lot of effort he has ended up making a hole in his sparkling stardom.
Banderas stepped on the stage again in New York in 2003, when he starred in Maury Yeston’s musical ‘Nine’ on Broadway – “I dance with Chita Rivera!”, he said joyfully to ABC during rehearsals. We had to wait more than fifteen years to see him on stage again, this time in our country, being the locomotive of his project, the Soho Caixabank Theater in Malaga, a project that has musical theater as its backbone. ‘A Chorus Line’ and ‘Company’ have been his first titles-his as a director and actor, which he will follow, next season, ‘Godspell’, now only as a producer.
