Music, Style & Culture

Puss In Boots - Press Conference

Antonio Banderas, Salma Hayek and director Chris Miller have as much fun offscreen.

With Puss in Boots in UK cinemas today, 9th December, we bring you a report from the London press conference with its stars and director.

Antonio Banderas reprises his voice role as the swashbuckling outlaw Puss in this hugely enjoyable prequel to the Shrek movies. He's joined by his real-life friend and frequent co-star Salma Hayek, who plays a [literal] cat burglar named Kitty Softpaws. Read our review here.

The quick-witted and thoroughly charming pair were joined by their genial director Chris Miller (Shrek the Third). In a special live broadcast that was streamed to film fans in classrooms throughout the UK, the first three questions below were asked by a young ambassador from Filmclub.org.

Are there any similarities between you and your characters?
Antonio: Well, I adore this character. It would be bad for me to say I have similarities with him because he has values that I don't! He is just too courageous, and I try to be but it's hard. I would say is that I think the creative people, the scriptwriters and our director and everybody who is involved in the movie, they try to get from you, a lot of your personal features, and so it may have something of my character. Also they make references to characters that I have played in the past, like Zorro, Desperado and the 13th Warrior – epic characters that I have played. So I suppose there is something there. And because I have been doing this for 10 years... more and more I can see a little bit more of me.
Salma: I am very independent and I have a great sense of adventure. I do feel like I have a lot of similarities with my character, but I want to clarify that I am not a thief. We are not alike at all.
Chris: She just borrows things a lot! I thought my performance as Guard No. 3 was far more devastating [than Boy Blue]. I think I get any roles in these films because I come really cheap! When we make the movies we spend a lot of time in our editorial bay - we record temp tracks, where we voice for everything before we bring in any of the performers. We test material. So what happens is myself and my writer Tom Wheeler will play all the boy parts and our producer Latifa Ouaou will play every woman in the film, and somehow we end up landing a few of those parts.

What films did you watch when you were younger and what inspired you at that age?
Antonio: I loved Peter Pan. I didn't know about the fairy tale, I just saw the movie when I was very young, and it had a huge impact on me. It doesn't mean that I have a Peter Pan complex, because I grew up and have responsibilities! But I just love the adventures and the possibility of never growing up.
Salma: More than inspire me, they sent me to the shrink! First it was Bambi, you know, that gave me depression at the age of six or seven. It confronted me with death, and I'm still working on that one! Then there were the princesses and those ones messed me up because you think that a prince is going to come and rescue you. And you think if you're cute you don't have to do much in life, which is not true. I had to deal with that one for a long time. But then came Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory and this was redemption, because then something clicked in my brain and I understood that there was a place in the world where anything could happen. Where there were no limitations, that you could chew some gum that would make you fly and you could burp yourself back to Earth. This is what made me want to be an actress because there was a place in the world called films, where you could go and you had no limitations.
Chris: Monty Python and the Holy Grail. I always loved that film.
Salma: What film? Is that a religious film? I never saw that...
Chris: I just remember seeing it – I was far too young to watch the film, I was six or seven. It would have to have been one of those viewings where you sit on the staircase, peering through the bars at the TV set, with no one knowing you were watching. It felt like forbidden fruit in that way, but also Terry Gilliam's animation in that film was so inspiring to me. I've never laughed so hard at a movie at such a young age.

What advice would you give to young people?
Antonio: [Adopts Puss voice] It's a long story... If you're at that age, thinking about the possibility of acting... for me it was the theatre. My father and my mother were theatre aficionados, and they used to take me when I was young. I loved the ritual that took place, the storytelling. I just wanted to jump the other side of the mirror and do it myself. In all my years as a professional, the one thing that moves me is love for what I do.
Salma: This is not advice that anyone has given to me, but it's advice I would like to give to someone. Don't think about getting to somewhere someone else has got, but figure out where it is you have to get. There was not anyone I could do that with - there were no Mexican actresses working in movies at the Worldwide stage. So if I had followed someone else, I never would've got here. Because of social media, everyone is obsessed with their identity, but seen from other people. Figure out who you are, and not what you want other people to think you are.
Chris: Once you discover who you are, be prolific. If you're a painter, paint. If you're an actor, act. It sounds simple, but if you want to make movies, make films.

Why has it taken so long for the scene-stealing Puss in Boots to get his own gig?
Chris: It took just long enough. The idea has been out there since he first appeared in the first Shrek film. You know the size and scope of that character and the personality Antonio infused in that character with sort of demanded it. Couple that with the giant big eyes, we thought, we've got a weapon of mass destruction here. It just took time - it took a little while for the right kind of story to form, but we knew it was just a matter of time.



Salma, is it true to came close to death when recording your vocals?
Salma: It's true! We were recording in the studio, and suddenly the wall came down. I barely moved out of the way, and it crushed the chair I was in. It was really scary!
Chris: The wall brushed my shoulder. I had this image of Salma being swallowed by this wall.
Salma: It was really strange. I don't know if it was peripheral vision, but I was talking in the mic, and I suddenly thought RUN! If I had thought about it, it would've been very bad.

Is it fair to say you've used up one of your nine lives?
Salma: Is it nine lives here? It's seven in Mexico. I think the English stole some of the lives of our cats.

At the beginning, Puss comes out with a list of his nicknames - what were yours growing up?
Antonio: When I was a little kid my ears were like this [sticks them out], and nature then corrected it. [Salma checks for scars] They used to call me Dumbo.
Salma: Mine would not make sense in English. I was the youngest person in my class, and when puberty hit, I still looked like a little boy, and the girls would make fun of me. The boys used to call me something that doesn't translate - it means the swimmer but it also means the nothing. That doesn't apply to me anymore! [laughs]

Antonio, any year you can star in The Skin I Live In and Puss in Boots in the same period must be good. How does it feel to break Hollywood – to be able to mix and match those films now?
Antonio: I think that movies serve many different purposes - from comedies to movies that reflect the complexities of the human soul. This particular year was almost like a metaphor of my career in a way, having these two movies come out one behind the other. Puss is so white, shiny and fun, and the other one is pitch black - it's literally a dark movie, it's disturbing. But that is what I think an actor should accomplish. Just to have the possibility of going to those two very different universes and everything in the middle.

Antonio and Salma, you've worked together on screen and you've now worked together in a recording studio. How much more challenging is it to build a relationship in a recording studio as opposed to running around performing stunts as in Desperado?
Salma: After 18 years of knowing him and working together and being friends, it was not challenging at all to build a relationship with Antonio. Also because I knew his character so well, because I have a four year old who watches those films over and over. I felt like I had a ghost in the recording studio talking to me because I could almost hear him saying the lines! Not to mention that Chris Miller is such a good imitator of Antonio. [Chris gives amazing impression of Banderas: "Fear me, if you dare"]
Antonio: We've known each other for a while and somehow you know the lines are going to be coming and I knew how Salma was going to be saying it - I knew more or less what she was going to do with those lines, so I tried to bounce. We fight very well on the screen; we can produce a lot of comedy in those soft fights between man and woman. I knew her character was a little bit like her, an independent, free-spirited fighter – and sexy of course – so I knew how she was going to play those lines, so I just tried to bounce that back.
Salma: I tell you what was really great though - every time I've worked with Antonio I've had bruises, cuts, pain, herniated discs in my back and all other kinds of injuries from the crazy stunts that Robert Rodriguez put us through. It's a miracle we survived. So to be able to be jump across roofs and be so athletic at 45, to have the animators do all that and you just put the voice on... that was so cool.
Antonio: I remember her being hung from a crane in the desert, screaming "I am not a piñata!"