
The film was released in the United States on Jto critical and commercial success, grossing $250 million on a $95 million budget. Connery dropped out and was replaced with Hopkins, and The Mask of Zorro began filming in January 1997 at Estudios Churubusco in Mexico City, Mexico. Salomon cast Sean Connery as Don Diego de la Vega, while Rodriguez brought Banderas in the lead role. Producer Steven Spielberg had initially developed the film for TriStar Pictures with directors Mikael Salomon and Robert Rodriguez, before Campbell signed on in 1996. He is aided by his successor (Banderas), who is pursuing his own vendetta against the governor's right-hand man while falling in love with de la Vega's daughter. The film features the original Zorro, Don Diego de la Vega (Hopkins), escaping from prison to find his long-lost daughter (Zeta-Jones) and avenge the death of his wife at the hands of the corrupt governor Rafael Montero (Wilson). It was directed by Martin Campbell and stars Antonio Banderas, Anthony Hopkins, Catherine Zeta-Jones, and Stuart Wilson.
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Raised in the city of Malaga on Spain's southern Andalusian coast, Banderas initially dreamed of becoming a professional soccer player, but that hope was crushed by a severe foot injury.The Mask of Zorro is a 1998 American swashbuckler film based on the character of the masked vigilante Zorro created by Johnston McCulley. But after working 14 hours a day, when you have start a swordfight with somebody else - and have to be funny about it! - well, we are actually very lucky that everybody came away with all of their eyes and ears."
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You can control all of that after all those months if you're doing a movie in which you don't have to take any kind of risks. "Then, when we moved to Mexico City, we were working at 2,600 meters altitude, so we were out of breath all the time and had to get oxygen out of bottles. We were working in the Sonora Desert in 118 degrees, and I was wearing suede pants, two shirts and a felt jacket! And they were catching three or four rattlesnakes a day around the set. "Six-and-a-half months in Mexico - and I love Mexico - but it was so hot.

"It was a very physically tough project," Banderas explains. Which with this movie, more often than not, meant working to within inches of one's life. Not that "Mask of Zorro" is a comedy on the order of George Hamilton's "Zorro the Gay Blade." But like the Hollywood feature films it most resembles, the silent 1920 and sound 1940 "The Mark of Zorro," "Mask" is an adventure romp that knows precisely when to kid itself and when to get down to action-packed business. With an out-of-control guy like Murrieta, an extended trial-and-error period ensues.
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Much of the film's comedy springs from Hopkins' noble Don Diego De La Vega's efforts to teach hotheaded Murrieta both the finer points of fencing and how to behave like a true Spanish gentleman. He is recruited by the original Zorro (Anthony Hopkins) to take up the famous black mask and cape against evil Spanish aristocrat Don Rafael Montero (Stuart Wilson). There's plenty of joshing amid the swashbuckling in "Mask of Zorro," which was directed by Martin Campbell ("GoldenEye") and executive produced by Steven Spielberg, among others.īanderas plays Alejandro Murrieta, a less-than-successful bandit in old Mexican California. And of course, I feel that if you are going to laugh about other stuff, the first thing you have to be able to laugh about is yourself."

"That is why I work best with directors who include that wink in their work, who know that it is always OK to laugh.

I like the irony of life - or, at least, I use that approach when confronted with things I don't like or understand. "That's my position in life, in general terms. "I consider a sense of humor, being ironic, synonymous with being intelligent," says the 37-year-old Spanish actor, who's made an international career out of slyly joshing the good looks and radiant charm that could have typecast him as a latter-day Latin lover. There was really only one way for Antonio Banderas to get through filming "The Mask of Zorro." The way he's gotten through most of his life: laugh a lot. LOS ANGELES - The desert temperatures were brutal. Spanish actor manages to maintain smile behind Zorro mask
