Why Antonio Banderas ditched Hollywood for suburban England
The actor has left behind his California mansion for a prefabricated home in Surrey, in the commuter belt south of London. The Spanish heartthrob tells Emma Wells why.
He is the poster boy for Latin machismo, the smouldering Spaniard who, the star of , , and who set pulses racing across the globe. Before that he was the muse of art-house director Pedro Almodovar, and he's been married to Hollywood royalty, in the form of Melanie Griffith. Antonio Banderas is secure in his status as an international film star and all-round object of envy and lust - so what on earth is he doing living in a prefabicated home in the staid British stockbroker belt south of London?
"I was married for 20 years, based in the US, and of course the country has given me a lot," says the Malaga-born Banderas, 55, from the sparsely furnished study of a five-bedroom Huf Haus near Cobham, Surrey. "But the kids are grown up now [his daughter with ex-wife Griffith, Stella, is 19; he also has two stepchildren, star Dakota Johnson, 26, and Alexander, 30] and I am just not attached there on a personal level.
"I have a home on Central Park, in New York, but homes in Spain, too, and it felt like the perfect time for me to get back to Europe. This return had to happen."
Such talk of destiny, in his knee-weakening, heavily accented English, is almost enough to make you forgive him for such a prosaic move. After all, shortly before his high-profile divorce from Griffith, 58, last year, they sold their sprawling, hacienda-style home in Los Angeles' upmarket Hancock Park for just under US$16 million. With seven bedrooms, a recording studio, elaborate security apparatus, a fitness centre and a courtyard pool, that seems a far more natural habitat for a movie star who has acted opposite Sylvester Stallone, Brad Pitt, Johnny Depp, Angelina Jolie and, most recently, Juliette Binoche in , about the 2010 rescue of Chilean miners.
"This house gives me the simplicity and freedom I need in my life at the moment," Banderas says. "I find Surrey magical. I am not a party person any more, so I have the space and peace to write and really get inside my own head - I am working on several scripts. I go cycling in the woods, and everyone in Cobham, Weybridge and Esher is incredibly friendly. Above all, I am surrounded by nature. I love watching the deer and foxes that come to my garden."
