They like each other. They really like each other. Or else they’re faking it expertly.
We’re inclined to believe that the repartee between Antonio Banderas and Catherine Zeta-Jones is a significant reason why the 1998 film “The Mask of Zorro” caught fire as it did. It’s certainly a key explanation of why, seven years later, director Martin Campbell and executive producer Steven Spielberg reunited the pair for the sequel, “The Legend of Zorro,” opening Friday.
In the eight years since the first Zorro, Zeta-Jones has won an Oscar (for “Chicago”), married Michael Douglas and had two children. Banderas has directed a movie (“Crazy in Alabama”), starred in a Broadway musical (“Nine”) and helped ignite the “Spy Kids” franchise.
Do sword-fighting and horseback-riding muscles atrophy after seven years?
AB: I discovered … that I was seven years older. I said, “I did this very easy when I did the first one. Why is it taking me now so much time to learn the routines?”
CZJ: It’s kind of like having a baby. As soon as they wrap, the pain goes away. You forget all about it. … They put in much more action this time, and I’m doing all this stuff in a corset and two petticoats–and not just as you see it on screen, once, but from so many different angles. Up, down, in, out. Like Antonio said, we’re all getting older.
What’s more complicated: fighting in a floor-length dress or with a swirling cape?
CZJ: On some of the tighter shots, I used to pin the dress up so I could move faster because Martin Campbell is crazy. It has to be 115 mph. It can’t be 100. And Antonio could hardly see.
AB: I’ll tell you something. Zorro in real life would last presumably 15 seconds confronting anybody who has a sword.
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How about another sequel?
AB: If they wait another seven years, I’m going to be like Anthony Hopkins with the whip and the cigar.
CZJ: The corset’s going to be half undone because they can’t do it up. “Get out of here, Zorro!”
What do you remember about your lives eight years ago as “Zorro” got under way?
CZJ: … not having a place to live.
AB: I was the first Spanish actor to play the part. I remember I had to represent my country in a nice way. I still think that.