Salma Hayek, Antonio Banderas 27-year friendship: from 'Desperado' love scene to voicing 'Puss in Boots'

Antonio Banderas and Salma Hayek are set to team up again in the animated comedy "Puss in Boots: The Last Wish," which comes out on Dec. 21.

The stars met on the set of 1995’s "Desperado" and have maintained a strong friendship as well as working together on several more films since. 

Hayek opened up about Banderas being a "gentleman" while they were shooting the sex scene in "Desperado," the movie that helped launch her career, and how difficult the intimate scene was for her. 

Hayek said she started to "sob" before shooting on a closed set because the script had not mentioned the love scene, and she did not know about it until production started. 

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"One of the things I was afraid of was Antonio — he was an absolute gentleman and so nice, and we’re still super close friends — but he was very free," she said last year on the "Armchair Expert" podcast. "It scared me that for him, it was like nothing. I started crying, and he was like, ‘Oh my God. You’re making me feel terrible.’ And I was so embarrassed that I was crying." 

Hayek said Banderas and director Robert Rodriguez helped her through the scene. "We got through it. We did the best with what we could do at the time." 

In a 2011 interview for the first "Puss in Boots" movie, Hayek also described how grateful she was to Banderas for gifting her two live monkey animal actors who she had taken care of before they were cut out of the film.

"I did try to buy them, but I couldn’t afford them at the time, and I was really depressed about the monkeys, and he could afford them at the time," she said pointing to Banderas sitting next to her, "and he gave me the monkeys. It was the nicest, most generous thing."

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"I didn’t know to give monkeys to a woman produced such an effect," Banderas joked, saying he might start giving monkeys to more women. 

After "Desperado," the pair next filmed the anthology movie "Four Rooms" that came out the same year and starred in 2002’s "Frida" together. 

Hayek co-produced and starred as the title character in "Frida," with Banderas playing fellow painter David Alfaro Siqueiros.

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The next year, they worked together again on "Once Upon a Time in Mexico" – a sequel to "Desperado" – again directed by Rodriguez for which Banderas and Hayek reprised their roles – and in the comedy "Spy Kids 3: Game Over."

In 2011, the pair came back together to make the first installment of the "Puss in Boots" franchise with Banderas playing the title character and Hayek as his partner in crime, Kitty Softpaws. 

"Antonio Banderas is so wonderful in this role. He was born to play this cat," Hayek laughed in an interview promoting the film. "We’ve been working together for a long time, and we’ve done many movies together. It’s always a pleasure and a joy. He is so much this character and I know him so well by now that when I was doing the recordings even though he was not in the room, I sort of could hear him like a ghost saying the other lines. I could know exactly what that cat would sound like if he was saying those lines."

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In a separate dual interview, Banderas called working with Hayek in the movie "wonderful." "We had the opportunity in this movie actually to work together, which is not common [in animated films]. We’d normally work individually, but I asked Jeffrey Katzenberg to work with her and…" Banderas said.

"It was great," Hayek interjected. 

In another interview, Banderas joked that their recording sessions are "potentially dangerous."

"What’s great about doing it together is that we can improvise," Hayek added. "So, whatever he says I can actually respond immediately." 

Banderas joked that Hayek would "always find a way to end up saying the last word."

When the reporter asked if they knew they would have a lasting friendship when they met, Hayek said she had "wished" for it. 

"I knew we were going to be friends for life even before we met," Banderas joked, correcting, "almost immediately because there was a connection there right away." 

Banderas said he was shocked in December 2017, when Hayek wrote an op-ed in The New York Times, accusing Harvey Weinstein of sexual harassment. He said he "immediately" called her. 

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"It was important to reach out to her because she’s my dear friend," he said. "We are very good friends, and I didn’t know. I wanted to know. That’s why I immediately called her and said, ‘Salma, why didn’t you tell me?’ And she almost got into tears and she said, ‘Because I wanted to protect you guys. I didn’t want to put you in that position of having to confront a guy who was so powerful. That’s the reason: I didn’t want to damage my friends.’"

Before coming back together again for the third installment of "Puss in Boots," the pair also shot the live action comedy "The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard," a sequel to "The Hitman’s Bodyguard," in which Hayek reprised her role as Samuel L. Jackson’s wife and Banderas joined the cast as the movie’s main villain.

While maintaining a close friendship, Banderas and Hayek have never dated. Banderas was married to Melanie Griffith from 1996 until 2015 and Hayek married François-Henri Pinault, the CEO of Balenciaga’s parent company in 2009. 

Balenciaga was recently embroiled in controversy involving their holiday ad campaigns featuring imagery of children holding teddy bears in sexually suggestive costumes.

While Balenciaga has apologized over the ads, Hayek and her husband have remained silent. 

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"Puss in Boots: The Last Wish" is in theaters on Dec. 21.