Antonio Banderas and Salma Hayek, who both enjoy the company of cats, team up for Dreamworks’ Shrek spinoff, Puss in Boots, due in November.
Promoting their upcoming film this week at the Cannes Film Festival, Banderas and Hayek both revealed their connections with felines. Banderas and wife Melanie Griffith share their home with house cats while his mother-in-law, Tippi Hedron, enjoys the company of the larger variety kitty cats. Hedron adores each and every one of the 72 big cats that reside in her Shambala Preserve, near Los Angeles. “Sometimes, people just get a tiger because they’re beautiful when they’re little, and they grow,” Banderas said. “And before they eat the grandma, they just try to put it in a zoo or something later. What she does is take them there, take care of them. They’re in a much more open environment than in a zoo. She even had elephants and snakes.”
Hayek has lived with cats all her life, including the current tailless one. “I had a dog that is no longer with me that rescued that cat without a tail,” Hayek said. “This dog, she’s dead now, but she was on a ranch that I have, and she showed up with this cat that didn’t have a tail. I don’t know what did it. We took care of the cat, but it was this dog that was the friend of the cat.”
The upcoming film, Puss in Boots, is a prequel to Shrek and details Puss’ escapades before he met Shrek and the crew. In this adventure, he is after the magic beans that lead him to the goose that lays the golden eggs (remember Jack and the Beanstalk?). Mid-quest, he meets his match in the form of Kitty Softpaws (voiced by Hayek), who becomes his rival as well as the object of his famously romantic overtures.
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I love cats, heck I have five of them, but I’m skipping this. The last two Shrek movies were awful. This probably won’t be any better.
i’m going to dust off my exagerated “spanish accent” 🙂