Antonio Banderas: "In politics there are many more egos than in our world"

"I think that the world of egos exists in any profession, also in journalism, and in politics, I won't even tell you: there is no more to see the moment we are living, which is spectacular", says the man from Malaga with a grimace between resignation and disgust, asked about the weekend of extreme accusations between politicians of the Popular Party.

In politics, Banderas believes, "there are many more egos than in our world."

What happens, he explains in an interview with Efe, is that the actors have "a permanent magnifying glass"about all the activities they do"on and off camera". All those "nonsense" that are seen in the film "occur due to the insecurity that being an actor produces, because we are very exposed".

And it tells that the actors create "behavioral rituals" to attract good luck, which ratified by his side the Argentine master of the tables Oscar Martínez.

"I'm wearing fifty years of profession and the fear of being exposed is permanent", adds Martínez. "It is true that it is worse because in the theater it is a leap into the void every night. And the crazy thing is that we all know that it is impossible to repeat what happened the day before."

for that, thanks "the opportunity to laugh at ourselves", which" is very healthy, "considers the actor.

The film is based on the whim of a billionaire businessman who wants make a film to leave a mark; To do this, he hires a stellar team made up of the unaffordable filmmaker Lola Cuevas (Penélope Cruz), recognized as a world phenomenon, and the two best actors of the moment, owners of enormous talent, but with an even bigger ego.

They are the attractive and seductive actor of Hollywood Felix Rivero (Banderas) and the radical, meticulous and perfectionist theater actor Iván Torres (Oscar Martínez), two legends each in their own way, with absolutely irreconcilable characters. The director decides to take them to the extreme, forcing them to perform a series of increasingly strange tests to enter the roles that she has assigned them, until the confrontation between the two becomes unbearable.

"She has an ego and a half," she told Efe Cruz, for whom Lola Cuevas is a woman who "is very afraid": "I always imagined her dining on Christmas Eve alone in a luxury restaurant, like 'I'm fine , I don't need anyone', but it's fatal".

Cruz loves comedies, although he considers it difficult to get a good script. "It's a very delicate, complicated genre, but to have a script like this and the 'eye' of these two -Banderas and Martínez-, who see everything and who have such a peculiar, original and intelligent sense of humor, it has been a liberation to be able to interpret this crazy person". the wig of abundant red hair curls that identify it.

Directed by Mariano Cohn and Gastón Duprat, the creators of films as funny as 'The man next door' or 'The illustrious citizen'one of the most awarded films of Argentine cinematography, winner of the Goya for the best Ibero-American film in 2017, "Official Competition" leaves no puppet with a head.

The directors, also authors of the script together with Duprat's brother, Andrés, have told Efe that for years they wanted to shoot with Antonio Banderas and Penélope Cruz (who had already worked together on several Pedro Almodóvar films) and "Official Competition" is the result of four years of scripts in which the actors actively participated. "Without them, it would have been another movie," Duprat points out.

In addition to the stellar trio, they share a poster José Luis Gómez, Irene Escolar, Manolo Solo, Nagore Aramburu, Pilar Castro and Koldo Olabarri. Although it premiered in the Official Section of the Venice Film Festival, the film arrives in theaters in Spain next Friday, February 25, and in mid-March it will be released throughout Latin America.

By the way, Banderas has discovered that "it's delicious" after "taking a bite out of himself" in a photograph of chocolate, a gift from the Madrid hotel where he is staying and where today he met the Spanish press to promote the film.