Antonio Banderas Reveals Role as Mentor in Anthony Bourdain Biopic: ‘I Was Cleaning Fish Every Single Day!’

Work stunk on the Anthony Bourdain biopic — and Antonio Banderas relished the experience.

“We spent a month and a half filming in Cape Cod and Newport, constantly surrounded by the smell of fish,” he laughed. “Every time I came back to the hotel, I had to shower because I absolutely reeked — I was cleaning fish every single day!”

Speaking at the Torino Film Festival, Banderas shed new light on the Matt Johnson-directed, A24-produced “Tony,” which reimagines the chef-turned-globetrotter as an aimless young man.

“After finishing university, originally wanted to become a writer,” Banderas said. “But almost immediately, he began struggling with depression and drug addiction, so the film explores the very difficult early years of his life.”

Banderas plays a Brazilian-born restaurateur who takes the young Tony — played by “The Holdovers” breakout Dominic Sessa — under his wing. “Through this relationship, Tony begins to truly learn how to cook,” he said. “So the film is not just about cuisine or culinary techniques; it’s about his life, his identity, and his way of being — shaped by this unique mentor.”

While the real Bourdain began as a dishwasher at a restaurant run by Provincetown mainstay Ciro Cozzi, Banderas’ mentor is more of a composite character. He described the part as “a man from Brazil who works in the United States and has travelled the world.”

“My character studied at the finest institutions, graduating from the best gastronomy schools, yet he always remained an outsider,” Banderas added. “He created his own restaurant outside the traditional world of elite chefs, developing his own dishes with ingredients accessible to ordinary communities — simple food for everyday people.”

Indeed, Banderas placed great emphasis on mentors while in Turin to accept a lifetime achievement award — even describing his own career as the product of serendipitous encounters.

“I am a theater actor,” he explained. “Cinema came by chance, thanks to Pedro Almodóvar — a ‘chance’ that led to 130 films, but still, it was chance. Theater was my first love, and for the past seven or eight years, I’ve returned to my home in Malaga and to my true home on the stage. My life has changed, and now I am finally doing what my life’s project was always meant to be.”

Actor Paul Newman — the subject of a 24-film retrospective at this year’s Torino Film Festival, and whose piercing blue eyes stare out from the festival poster — was another formative figure in Banderas’ life.

“I worked for a year in New York doing a musical,” Banderas recalled. “One day I was on stage, singing, and at a certain point I saw Paul Newman with those eyes staring at me. I froze completely — it was incredibly powerful. We made a couple of films together, and I worked with his wife, Joanne Woodward, in ‘Philadelphia.’ He liked me, so we often went out to dinner in New York. He had this quirky habit: he would always ask for a very specific beer and tell the waiter, ‘In exactly 2 minutes and 45 seconds, please bring me another!’ I still think about that.”