Antonio Banderas 'I'm no Latin lover'

Antonio Banderas has decided to take on Hollywood for the sake of his fellow Latino stars.

The Spanish hunk is angry at the ongoing stereotype of Latin men being cast as lovers in movies and wants to force a change for the better.

“To be honest I don’t think the ‘Latin lover’ really exists any more in the way it did,” says Antonio.

“To be a Latin lover you have to be a little bit of an idiot, I do not consider myself to be an idiot. I consider myself to be other things, but not that. I am a modern man. But unfortunately I think I will be seen as a Latin lover forever.

“I am Latin but not a ‘lover’ in that heart-throb slicked-back dark hair sort of way. I might sweep my heroine away but not on a camel at midnight. And when I get old and my hair is falling out and I’m fat, bald and greasy, they’ll say: ‘He was a Latin Lover!’”

Antonio recently revealed he was typecast as a baddie due to his looks and accent when he first came to Hollywood but has made a point of making it as a good guy on screen.

“When I first came to America, 21 years ago, I did the movie The Mambo Kings, somebody on the set said to me, ‘If you are going to stay here, basically you’re going to play bad characters. You are going to be the bad guy in movies’. In these 21 years everything changed very much,” he said.

“In ways it’s a reflection of what is happening in society. I think it’s good for diversity, for cultural interaction, because now people don’t judge in those terms. People watch the movie and they see that their heroes have strong accents and that is good.”