Dr Jekyll and Mr Banderas

Two films out this fall reveal the two extremes of Antonio Banderas' personality: The Skin I Live In, directed by Pedro Almodóvar, sees the Malaga-born actor play a Dr Frankenstein-like plastic surgeon; in Puss in Boots, Melanie Griffith's husband lends his voice to the character he played in Shrek.

Puss in Boots, which will be out in November in Spain, will be given a big-budget Hollywood release; hence Banderas' presence in Amsterdam last week, where he was attending a distributors' convention, and talking up the animated movie.

"Shrek was the first movie to laugh at fairy tales. Since then, there have been several attempts to repeat the formula," said Banderas to industry executives.

Banderas says he has no problem lending his voice to yet another cartoon character. "I will see myself on the screen enough in the latest Almodóvar film, and in others by Woody Allen and Steven Soderbergh; I think I've notched up some 85 appearances. I don't need to see myself all the time. The character has been well thought out, and there is a huge team behind the project, which means that you really have to put your heart and soul into it. It's much harder work than it looks. The process is fascinating. Just reading the screenplay involves hundreds of people changing things as you work your way through it. They allow you to improvise, to adapt the character, it's a great job."

Preparing to be Puss in Boots might have been relatively straightforward, but getting into character to play Doctor Ledgard in The Skin I Live in was far from easy, says Banderas. He plays mad scientist Robert Ledgard, a driven plastic surgeon, shunned by the establishment and plotting revenge against the young man who assaulted his daughter.

Almodóvar is used to keeping his actors on a short leash, and Banderas, who hasn't worked with him since 1989, didn't like the experience. There were a few initial clashes that prompted Banderas to question whether he wanted to go through with the project. Ledgard proved a tough nut to crack. Banderas plays him as stealthy, steely and all but impassive, though this was not his first approach.

"Rehearsing the film in Pedro's house, I thought this guy is bigger than life, so I'm going to go big. Square my shoulders. Show off all my acting skills. But Pedro said, 'No, we're not going that way, my friend. The story's told in the script, you don't need to push it. Hold your horses. Keep it minimalist'," Banderas shrugs.

"Well, he was right and I was wrong. Yet again, he taught me a lesson," he says. "Of course, it was always like that with Pedro; I suppose I expected him to have changed, but I had forgotten. I guess I allow him to work with me like that because he has such a strong personality. He really pushes things. He is the boss. He has a very clear idea of what he wants and the direction he wants things to go in. I tried to talk through a few ideas with him, but he immediately put me in my place. But I have to admit that he has used me to create a character that is completely unlike anything that I have done before - a very economical character who operates in a space that moves from the Shakespearean to a Venezuelan soap opera, and taking in everything in between. He lives in a hydra-headed world, which might seem grotesque, but whether you like it or not, that is his way of working. I have to admit that when I saw the finished film, I said, 'Wow, that really is a character'."

Banderas says that Almodóvar has created a "stripped down" version of the actor for this latest film. "He was absolutely convinced about what he wanted, and he ended up convincing me as well. He kept telling me to let myself go."

Banderas' character shares something with the last role he played for Almodóvar in Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down, a sort of loveable kidnapper. "I don't know why, but Pedro sees something of me in these kinds of characters, something only he sees, and that he is determined to bring out. But the fact is that when I work, I just work, I don't get too much inside my characters' heads. I don't intellectualize things. The worst thing that can happen to an actor is to suddenly understand why a certain character works. If you analyze it, you lose it. If I understand what is going on, it goes. There are things in life that are simply better to leave as they are, without asking too many questions."

Happy to work, and happy with the roles he plays, Banderas modestly refers to himself as a jobbing actor. "I'm like those old-fashioned actors who would be doing comedy at the matinee, and then Shakespeare at night. I've done it all, and I don't see anything wrong with that."

Although he spends much of his time in the United States, Banderas says that either through "laziness or arrogance" he has refused to apply for citizenship. He met his wife Melanie Griffith on the set of a romantic comedy. The daughter of Tippi Hedren and still recovering from her wild child years, she already had a son and a daughter. But it was Banderas who turned the household into a family.

He says that he would probably have returned to Spain if he hadn't met Griffith. "She had kids and I didn't. And the kids were from American parents and they had to see their fathers. So if we brought them to Madrid, we'd have to be putting them on a plane every two weeks. It wouldn't have been fair." Banderas divorced his first wife, Spanish actress Ana Leza, to marry Griffith in 1996. Their daughter Stella is now 15.

They seem an unlikely pair, Banderas and Griffith: he, the down-to-earth Spaniard, and she, the daughter of Beverly Hills privilege.

"I have committed myself to my family, and it has been worth it, because there are big benefits. Sometimes you have to make a sacrifice; you have to be mature for the benefit of others. In this life you have to know that it's not just you in the photo," he says.