For five of the nominees announced earlier this month for acting Oscars, it was the first time they’d heard their names called out. Veterans and newcomers alike were honored — Antonio Banderas (“Pain and Glory”), Cynthia Erivo (“Harriet”), Scarlett Johansson (“Marriage Story” and “Jojo Rabbit”), Jonathan Pryce (“The Two Popes”) and Florence Pugh (“Little Women”). Four of these first-timers shared with The Envelope how it feels for them.
Antonio Banderas
Salvador Mallo in “Pain and Glory”
You’ve worked with director Pedro Almodovar eight times over 40 years. What was different about “Pain and Glory”?
What are the odds that you have to work with a director who is actually the character you are playing? The information you are getting from the director — especially everything that has to do with emotional information — that is something you cannot write in the script, but you can see in his eyes.
It was a very pleasant shooting, which is not normal. Almodovar is a very tough director, very meticulous and demanding. But in this particular case, I don’t know if it was because of the subject (loosely based on the director’s life) or because I was coming still from a heart attack (which he suffered in 2017) that provided me with a strange way to look at life I didn’t have before — less anxiousness to show things, more receptive to the things that are surrounding you.