
Salma Hayek and Antonio Banderas, the voices behind the ‘Shrek’ spin-off ‘Puss in Boots’ were on hand in Cannes this morning to promote the new film.
The Washington Post gave an interesting interview this morning:
Getting older in Hollywood and being Hispanic, they are no longer the limitations they once were, say Antonio Banderas and Salma Hayek. After all, they wonder, when have Hispanic actors ever landed such big feline roles as the leads in the animated adventure “Puss in Boots”?
“When I started out, Hispanic roles were very limited,” Hayek said Wednesday at the Cannes Film Festival, where she and Banderas joined DreamWorks Animation overseers to show off footage of “Puss in Boots,” a “Shrek” spinoff coming this November. “Roles were very limited. There were one or two kinds of characters you used to do. Now we get to play the cats! It’s OK to be a Hispanic, even if you are a cat.”
“Cats were British, normally,” Banderas added at a question-and-answer session alongside Hayek after the footage screened.
“I feel very proud, actually,” Banderas said of his role in expanding the types of parts open to Hispanic performers. “I never pretended when I first went to Hollywood to be a guy from Oklahoma. I am what I am. And fortunately, the Spanish community in the United States has grown in the last 22 years that I have been there. There has been an explosion in Hollywood, which is a reflection of the society in which we live.”
After the footage showed, Banderas and Hayek headed to a pier along the Mediterranean beach, where they posed for photos on a giant pair of boots bearing the movie’s title. Banderas reprises his voice role from the last three “Shrek” films, providing the voice of Puss in Boots, the tiny cat with the big heart, big ideas and bigger ego.
A prequel chronicling Puss’ adventures before meeting ogre Shrek, the movie has the cat as an outlaw, looking to pull off a big score. But his scheme is interrupted by another calculating cat, Kitty Softpaws (voiced by Hayek), who is in league with Puss’ pal-turned-foe Humpty Dumpty (Zach Galifianakis), as they try to swipe the magic beans of the “Jack and the Beanstalk” fairy tale from beastly bandits Jack and Jill (Billy Bob Thornton and Amy Sedaris).

Photos: Fame
Posted Wednesday, May 11th, 2011 at 8:08am
Filed under
Antonio Banderas,
Selma Blair |
No Comments »