Antonio Banderas Once Rejected Madonna’s Advances Because She Was Too ‘Powerful’

Madonna has dated quite a few celebrities during her long tenure in the spotlight. The multi-platinum artist once hoped to add Antonio Banderas to her history of boyfriends. But Banderas refused to reciprocate the singer’s feelings out of fear.

Antonio Banderas’ wife was banned from the set of ‘Evita’ because of Madonna’s crush

Madonna has always been open about the intense crush she had over actor Antonio Banderas. But Banderas was married at the time when she pursued him at a party. In the Madonna documentary Madonna: Truth or Dare, she shared her disappointment in Banderas’ newly discovered relationship status.

A few years later, Madonna would find herself working alongside Banderas in her passion project Evita. By then, Banderas was married to his second wife Melanie Griffith. But even as time passed, Griffith claimed that Madonna’s crush on Banderas was as strong as ever. So much so that Madonna’s crush was partly responsible for Griffith being banned from seeing her husband on the Evita set.

“I mean, Madonna was after him publicly. You know. So, and I was pregnant when he was doing Evita. I was pregnant — I had just gotten pregnant, and I went with him. So the press made a big thing about how Melanie’s watching over Antonio and she won’t leave him alone with Madonna because she’s afraid that Madonna’s going to — the “Material Girl” — will steal him. And — it really wasn’t the case,” Griffith once told Larry King.

Griffith wasn’t too pleased by these boundaries.

“I was hurt because I was banned from the set. They didn’t let me go on the set,” she said.

Antonio Banderas turned down Madonna because she was too powerful

Banderas was initially stunned upon hearing Madonna’s feelings towards him. Initially, the Zorro star met Madonna as a fan. Filmmaker Pedro Almodovar ended up introducing Banderas to Madonna in their younger years, a meeting that Banderas could barely get over.

“’Antonio’, Pedro said, ‘She would love to get to know you.’ I couldn’t speak English at the time,” Banderas once told Harper’s Bazaar (via Female First). “She said a lot of things at the table when we were having dinner, I couldn’t understand s***. I was just flipping out that I was sitting down close to Madonna. She was very famous already, and we were just local people.”

So when she heard one of his idols had a crush on her, he didn’t know how to react.

“It was kind of flattering when somebody said, ‘She likes you, a lot.’ I said, ‘Oh, really? I’ve no idea what I should do about this, I mean, I’m married [to first wife, Ana Leza].’ So, nothing happened,” he added. “I was afraid of it at the time, because she was a very powerful woman. I didn’t want to be Madonna’s boy. For good or for bad, I just wanted to have my own career,” hhe said.

Madonna told Antonio Banderas’ first wife to ‘get lost’ when meeting her

Filmmaker Almodovar once shared how Madonna reacted to Banderas’ first wife Leza. In memoir essays that Almodovar wrote, Madonna asked the filmmaker to visit her while she was filming Dick Tracy. When Madonna and Almodovar spoke, Madonna asked the director several questions about Banderas. Eventually, she would meet Banderas himself at the dinner party which was recorded in Madonna’s Truth or Dare.

“That night in 1990, he didn’t speak a word of English. I say this because a year later the film Madonna: Truth or Dare premiered, and a great part of it is filmed at my party at the Palace,” Almodovar wrote according to W magazine.

It was here that the filmmaker gave his account of Madonna’s dismissive response to Banderas’ first wife.

“Antonio’s harassment was one of the main storylines and she, obviously, edited in how she dispatched Ana Leza with only one sentence,” he continued. “At the end of the dinner, Ana dared to get close to our table and told the divine blonde sarcastically, ‘I see you like my husband, it doesn’t surprise me, all women like him, but I don’t mind because I am very modern.’ To which Madonna replied: ‘Get lost.’”