[on Carmen Maura] If you divide the stages of my career and labelled them with the names of the people I've worked with, there's definitely a stage in my filmmaking that would be called The Carmen Maura Years, and those films were all in the 80s - although I did work with her again on Volver (2006). At the time, I felt she was absolutely the best vehicle I could find to tell my stories. She was the actress who had the best intuition, to connect with what I wanted from her. She could be very funny and very dramatic at the same time, so it was the perfect combination for me. Our relationship was absolutely perfect. We had this total communion, this osmosis, that went on, and due, probably, to that very intense and very fruitful engagement, it generated a number of personal problems that led to us having to stop working together. We were a filmmaking couple, but we faced all the issues - all the personal issues - that a normal couple faces. In that same period, through the 1980s up to 1990, the actor who best understood me and was able to play my parts was Antonio Banderas. Together with Carmen Maura.
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