The cat's whiskers

The hundreds of thumbnail biographies of Antonio Banderas that pepper the internet will tell you that what first brought the Malaga-born actor to international attention were his starring roles in a series of films made in the late Eighties by Spanish director Pedro Almodovar, principally

Banderas first set foot on the global stage in 1991 when he politely but firmly rebuffed Madonna's brazen advances in the Material Girl's warts'n'all documentary In Bed With Madonna. In that moment, with a lusty chorus of 'Who the hell is that guy?', audiences around the world anointed Banderas the new red hot Latin lover.

He has been a superstar ever since, thrilling us with his glowering good looks in such movies as The Mambo Kings, Philadelphia, Interview With The Vampire, Desperado and The Mask Of Zorro.

Nevertheless, despite his consistently high profile, 43-yearold Banderas' CV is patchy, and alongside the blockbusters are an inordinate amount of duds --boxing flick Play It To The Bone, bodiceripper Original Sin and action epic Ballistic: Ecks vs.

Sever conspicuous among them.

The truth is, despite looking every inch the part on both counts, Banderas has never fitted comfortably into the mould of either traditional action hero or standard-issue romantic lead. He is much too good an actor for that. 'I've never had a game plan for my career,' he says, brightly. 'I never

worried about what audiences will accept or will not accept. I love to show one side of myself and then immediately go in another direction.' Even so, he has taken an alarming number of wrong turns recently with only Frida (a supporting role), Once Upon A Time In Mexico (in which his iconic El Mariachi is nearly upstaged by Johnny Depp's loopy FBI spook) really working his dramatic mojo.

This month, however, Banderas redeems himself in fine, if unexpected style, sending himself up and stealing the entire movie from under his co-stars' noses as the swashbuckling Puss In Boots in Shrek 2. 'I was trying to laugh a little bit at the aura I carry around,' he laughs. 'In the beginning the character was French, like a

D'Artagnon. But then they thought, there is no French community in America. So immediately they called me. And immediately Puss had a personality because I have this accent, you know, and this voice that, after 14 years, people maybe now recognise.'

They'll maybe recognise something else, too. 'Basically,' he says, '[Puss] is a spoof of Zorro. He has all the arrogance of Zorro, he's a guy trying to be like Robert Mitchum, but he has the body of a little cat. Zorro was supposed to be a serious character, but we brought a lot of comedy to him, too. We made him a delinquent, a rough guy. In the beginning, the guy doesn't have any idea how to swordfight or ride horses; he's falling over all the time. And when you fail in front of an audience like that, the character becomes sympathetic.' This willingness to send up his swarthy man-of-action image has served Banderas well. As

grandiose entrance (during which he utters the immortal line 'Fear me - if you dare!') is interrupted while he takes about three minutes to cough up a gigantic hairball. 'The only worry I had while I was doing that,' he says, 'is that I was in rehearsals for Nine (the Emmy-nominated Broadway musical) and I had to sing every night. I had been spitting hair out of my throat all morning and the girls were looking at me going, "What happened to him? A rough night or what?" I said, "No, it was the fault of the cat."'