Stella del Carmen has heard many times how her parents' love story began. Antonio Banderas and Melanie Griffith were one of the most charismatic couples in cinema during the 1990s, and theirs wasn't a fleeting crush. It was an intense, lasting relationship marked by complicity, although everything started on a film set.
The year was 1996, and Antonio Banderas had already made a name for himself in Hollywood. Pedro Almodóvar had been key to his international projection. Films like Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! and Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown propelled him beyond Spain. Later, he made the leap with The Mambo Kings and Philadelphia, and his career in the United States kept growing step by step.
It was on the set of Two Much, directed by Fernando Trueba, where he met Melanie Griffith. She was an established star in American cinema. He was a rising European actor. They shared scenes and, unknowingly, they also shared an imminent life change.
Antonio Banderas tells everything
"We were married, but our marriages weren't working," Banderas confessed years later. Sometimes, on film sets, people form fleeting bonds and a chemistry develops that disappears when the cameras stop rolling. But this time it was different. "We didn't forget it: we kept calling each other. Two days, two weeks, two months..." the actor explained.
What seemed like a movie story became something real. Melanie would travel just to see him, even if it was only for an hour. "She'd take a private plane from Seattle and come right back. We were crazy," Antonio said, laughing.
That same year, the couple got married, and shortly after, in 1996, Stella del Carmen was born. A girl who grew up between two worlds: the glamour of Hollywood and her father's Andalusian roots. Antonio and Melanie spent almost twenty years together. Although in 2015 they decided to separate, they never stopped keeping an affectionate relationship.
Today, Antonio Banderas is with Nicole Kimpel, his current partner. His life has changed, but the memories remain. His time with Melanie is still an important part of his emotional biography. Not only because of what they experienced, but also because of what they built together: a family, a daughter, and a shared legacy.
Stella, now an adult, has been able to know that story from the inside. She has heard her parents speak fondly of the past. She knows the love between them was real. Although their relationship didn't last forever, it was authentic while it existed.
For her, discovering how they fell in love is understanding part of her identity. It's knowing the exact moment when everything began. A story from a film set that ended up being a life story.