Antonio Banderas Came to Hollywood and Execs Told Him: ‘You Are Here, Like the Blacks and Hispanics, to Play the Bad Guys’

Mar 27, 2026 8:54am PT Antonio Banderas Came to Hollywood and Execs Told Him: ‘You Are Here, Like the Blacks and Hispanics, to Play the Bad Guys’

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Zack Sharf

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LONDON, ENGLAND - NOVEMBER 03: Antonio Banderas attends the "Paddington In Peru" World Premiere in Leicester Square on November 03, 2024 in London, England. (Photo by Kate Green/Getty Images)

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Antonio Banderas said in a recent interview with The Times of London (via The Independent) that he was warned upon arriving in Hollywood that Latinos and Blacks could only play villain roles, a stereotype he would later shatter by playing the swashbuckler Zorro in 1998’s “The Mask of Zorro.”

“They said, ‘You are here, like the Blacks and the Hispanics, to play the bad guys,'” Banderas told the publication about pivoting from Spanish movies to Hollywood productions. “The problem was a few years later I had a mask, hat, sword and cape and the bad guy was Captain Love, who was blond and had blue eyes.”