Antonio Banderas was scared of dating ‘powerful’ Madge

Washington: Spanish actor Antonio Banderas has revealed that he was afraid of dating Madonna as he considered her to be a very powerful woman.

Banderas, 50, now married to Melanie Griffith, also admitted that he was flattered when Madonna, 52, revealed her interest in him early in his career. “It was kind of flattering when somebody said, ‘She likes you, a lot.’ I said, ‘Oh, really? I’ve no idea what I should do about this, I mean, I’m married [to first wife, Ana Leza].’ So, nothing happened,” Contactmusic quoted him as telling Harper’s Bazaar magazine. “I was afraid of it at the time, because she was a very powerful woman. I didn’t want to be Madonna’s boy. For good or for bad, I just wanted to have my own career,” he added. Griffith ‘flipped out’ in his first meeting with the pop superstar, when his friend, movie director Pedro Almodovar, introduced him to her. “‘Antonio,’ Pedro said, ‘She would love to get to know you.’ I couldn’t speak English at the time. “She said a lot of things at the table when we were having dinner, I couldn’t understand s**t. I was just flipping out that I was sitting down close to Madonna. She was very famous already, and we were just local people,” Banderas added. ANI