Salma Hayek, Antonio Banderas 27-year friendship: from ‘Desperado’ love scene to voicing ‘Puss in Boots’

by suadopaja · June 1, 2024

Salma Hayek and Antonio Banderas have been friends for nearly 30 years. (Photo by Albert L. Ortega/Getty Images)

“One of the things I was afraid of was Antonio — he was an absolute gentleman and so nice, and we’re still super close friends — but he was very free,” she said last year on the “Armchair Expert” podcast. “It scared me that for him, it was like nothing. I started crying, and he was like, ‘Oh my God. You’re making me feel terrible.’ And I was so embarrassed that I was crying.”

Hayek said Banderas and director Robert Rodriguez helped her through the scene. “We got through it. We did the best with what we could do at the time.”

Salma Hayek and Antonio Banderas in "Desperado."

Antonio Banderas and Salma Hayek met on the set of 1995’s “Desperado.” (Photo by Columbia Pictures/Getty Images)

In a 2011 interview for the first “Puss in Boots” movie, Hayek also described how grateful she was to Banderas for gifting her two live monkey animal actors who she had taken care of before they were cut out of the film.

“I did try to buy them, but I couldn’t afford them at the time, and I was really depressed about the monkeys, and he could afford them at the time,” she said pointing to Banderas sitting next to her, “and he gave me the monkeys. It was the nicest, most generous thing.”

“I didn’t know to give monkeys to a woman produced such an effect,” Banderas joked, saying he might start giving monkeys to more women.

Salma Hayek at the GQ Men Of The Year Awards last month. (Photo by Mike Marsland/WireImage)

After “Desperado,” the pair next filmed the anthology movie “Four Rooms” that came out the same year and starred in 2002’s “Frida” together.

Hayek co-produced and starred as the title character in “Frida,” with Banderas playing fellow painter David Alfaro Siqueiros.

The next year, they worked together again on “Once Upon a Time in Mexico” – a sequel to “Desperado” – again directed by Rodriguez for which Banderas and Hayek reprised their roles – and in the comedy “Spy Kids 3: Game Over.”

In 2011, the pair came back together to make the first installment of the “Puss in Boots” franchise with Banderas playing the title character and Hayek as his partner in crime, Kitty Softpaws.

“Antonio Banderas is so wonderful in this role. He was born to play this cat,” Hayek laughed in an interview promoting the film. “We’ve been working together for a long time, and we’ve done many movies together. It’s always a pleasure and a joy. He is so much this character and I know him so well by now that when I was doing the recordings even though he was not in the room, I sort of could hear him like a ghost saying the other lines. I could know exactly what that cat would sound like if he was saying those lines.”