• What is your idea of perfect happiness? The very short instant right after accomplishing something very challenging.
• What is your greatest fear? The death of my loved ones.
• What is the trait you most deplore in yourself? My pathological incapacity to say no.
• What is the trait you most deplore in others? I don’t like fake people, impostors.
• What do you dislike most about your appearance? I would like to be four inches taller. (He’s 5′ 9″)
• What is your current state of mind? Excited and calm even if it is a contradiction.
• If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be? The age. I would like to be 30 years old now.
• If you could change one thing about your family, what would it be? I wouldn’t change my family for anything in the world.
• What do you consider your greatest achievement? I survived Hollywood.
• If you were to die and come back as a person or thing, what do you think it would be? A mountain.
• If you could choose what to come back as, what would it be? The ocean.
• What is your most marked characteristic? People always say my eyes.
• What is the quality you most like in a man? Integrity.
• What is the quality you most like in a woman? Compassion.
• What do you most value in your friends? Loyalty.

~ Antonio Banderas, excerpts from “Antonio Banderas Answers the Proust Questionnaire” Vanity Fair, December 12, 2019

Photo: Actor Antonio Banderas attends the “The Skin I Live In” premiere at the Palais des Festivals during the 64th Cannes Film Festival on May 19, 2011 in Cannes, France. (Photo by Michael Buckner/Getty Images)