A Cape. A Sword. A Star?

It was around 2 o’clock one afternoon near Guaymas, Mexico, and temperatures were hovering at a throat-parching 118 degrees. The heat had been so brutal that urgent calls had gone out to Mexico City to send salt tablets for cast and crew members who were beginning to wilt.

And there was the hair-raising admonition of watching where one stepped. More than a dozen men would fan out to clear the area of poisonous snakes, and they were averaging three or four rattlers a day.

On this particular afternoon, as the order to commence action was given, Antonio Banderas, bearded and cloaked with sweat, began running . . . and running . . . and thinking, “What am I doing here?”

“It’s like you have to get into an almost Zen position and try and overcome the situation,” the actor recalls now with a laugh.

Like Banderas, they had all come to Mexico to film TriStar Pictures’ “The Mask of Zorro,” and, like Banderas, each had his own reasons for making the high-profile summer action movie.

For co-star Anthony Hopkins, it was a chance to shake off bygone roles and play a character who wasn’t, in his words, “dead from the kneecaps up.” And what better character to portray than Zorro, that sword-slashing Robin Hood of Old California?

For Catherine Zeta-Jones, an ex-dancer who hails from a town in Wales not 20 miles from Hopkins’ Port Talbot, it was a chance to appear in her first major American film, a chance offered her by no less a Hollywood titan than Steven Spielberg.

For Martin Campbell, who made the 1995 James Bond thriller, “GoldenEye,” it was the opportunity to direct an action film devoid of high-tech weaponry.

Spielberg’s production company, Amblin Entertainment, and TriStar’s parent studio, Sony Pictures Entertainment, were simply taking a gamble that Zorro would emerge as an action hero for the late 1990s, spawning lucrative sequels like “Batman.”

And Banderas?

If it flies, if audiences flock to “The Mask of Zorro” when it debuts Friday the way test audiences indicate they should, then Banderas will achieve something that has eluded the 37-year-old heartthrob: the lead role in a certified blockbuster.

Born in Malaga, Spain, Banderas is well aware of the immense popularity Zorro enjoys in the Latin world.

“It’s a myth--a Spanish myth--that has never been acted or performed by a Spanish guy,” he says. “I think they deserve to have a hero back from the old days.”

Sitting cross-legged on a sloping lawn outside Culver Studios in Culver City, where he is directing his first film, “Crazy in Alabama,” Banderas greets a visitor with a warm smile conveys instant friendship. He wears shorn locks that bear a resemblance to a Roman emperor--or a kid playing soccer. This casual look--a director’s look--is a bit of a change from the sweat-streaked sex symbol that he portrays in “Zorro.”

Banderas needs no encouragement to launch a conversation. The words spill from his lips in a rapid-fire, heavily Spanish-accented English that is difficult, at times, to understand. His mind races from subject to subject--the challenge of making “Zorro,” the self-doubts about directing “Crazy in Alabama,” the mistakes he made midway in his career, the times when he and his wife, Melanie Griffith, were hunted by the paparazzi, the years growing up in Spain.

As a boy, Banderas knew first-hand what it was like to live under an oppressive political climate. At school, he and other children were forced to give the straight-armed fascist salute and sing the national anthem of Francisco Franco’s dictatorship. Caution was his constant companion.

“You feel you cannot talk about certain things--even if you are a kid,” Banderas said.

Although he was never a political rebel, Banderas recalled being led away by police at 14 after he and members of a theater group defied the government by performing the forbidden work of Bertholt Brecht.

“I remember seeing the shine of the helmets of the cops in the wings of the theater just waiting for us,” Banderas said. “I remember just getting out after the applause and putting my hands like that [straightening his arms out in front of him] and being handcuffed.”

As a child, Banders says, he would sit in the darkened theater, wishing he were up there on stage.

“I remember being impressed by old actors because they were still kids,” he said. “Those old men, 70 years old, were on stage playing like a kid. It was fascinating to me--the possibility of not growing up.”

After working in a small theater company in his hometown, Banderas moved to Madrid in 1981, becoming an ensemble member of the National Theater of Spain. A year later, he was cast by writer-director Pedro Almodovar in “Labyrinth of Passion,” the first of five movies they would make together, including “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown.”

The success of those films brought him to the attention of American audiences and in 1992, he made his American film debut as a young Cuban musician in “The Mambo Kings.” That provided a springboard to significant supporting roles in “Philadelphia,” “The House of the Spirits” and “Interview with the Vampire.”

His first starring role in an American film came in 1995 with Robert Rodriguez’s “Desperado,” but whatever heat he and actress Salma Hayek generated on the screen was muted by the fact that the movie took in only $25.4 million domestically.

He had much more success a year later, when he was cast opposite Madonna in the Alan Parker film “Evita.” Portraying the cynical Che, Banderas surprised Hollywood by proving he could sing. The Andrew Lloyd Webber-Tim Rice musical sputtered out after taking in only $50 million domestically, but it took in $91 million overseas.

Until “Evita,” Banderas said, there was a period when he was making too many films.

“In 1994-95, I worked too much because I was following the Spanish pattern,” he said. “They were offering me things and I was taking them, not even reflecting on them. This is a project--I’d take it. This is a project--I’d take it. Because that, in Spain, is what we do. You’re not allowed to reject projects because you’d die of starvation.”

There was a moment in 1995 when he walked down the streets of Westwood and Hollywood and saw his name on marquee after marquee. “I said, ‘Oh, my God.’ None of the movies were good, none of the movies were bad either. It’s just the fact that you were overexposed.”

He now tries to make no more than one or two movies a year. “Otherwise, you’re in jeopardy--you’re not giving the audience 100% of yourself,” he said. “You are looking at yourself in the morning and saying, ‘No!’ ”

With disarming honesty, Banderas said that if his current project, “Crazy in Alabama,” fails, the blame will fall entirely on his shoulders.

“If something goes wrong here, it’s because of me,” he said. “[Sony Pictures Entertainment] gave me absolute freedom, which is kind of weird in a movie like this.”

The film is based on a 1993 novel by Mark Childress, who also wrote the screenplay. It is a black comedy about an eccentric, star-struck Southern housewife (Griffith), who is wanted on a murder charge for cutting off the head of her abusive husband, putting it in a Tupperware bowl and traveling to California to strike it big in show business. The film is set against the backdrop of the civil rights movement in a small Southern town in the mid-1960s. TriStar will release the film in April.

“Crazy in Alabama” is the first project made under the Green Moon Productions banner, the production company set up by Banderas and Griffith. The film is being produced for less than $20 million.

“This is my first time putting my foot in the water,” he said, betraying a trace of doubt. “Maybe I’m bad at directing, but I’m going to try.”

Although he concedes there are risks attached in making a black comedy, he feels so passionately about the story he would have it no other way.

“It’s like you’re in love with a woman and everybody’s telling you, ‘That’s the wrong woman.’ But you’re in love. There’s no way you can get away from it and say, ‘You’re right, it’s wrong for my life.’ ”

There were also those who told Banderas that directing one’s wife could jeopardize their marriage, but he shrugged off the warnings. “If Melanie doesn’t feel something, she’s going to comment to me--’You know, Antonio, I don’t feel this way. I feel funny. I would like to approach the character in a different point of view.”’

He said they also have the advantage of watching the dailies each night and discussing her performance, then making plans for the next day’s shoot.

After wrapping “Crazy in Alabama,” Banderas will spend about three weeks playing a small role in “The White River Kid” for director Arne Glimcher [“Mambo Kings”], and next year, he hopes to star in the movie version of Lloyd Webber’s “The Phantom of the Opera” for Warner Bros.

“I’m in contact almost every week with Andrew Lloyd Webber,” Banderas says. “If everything goes on the right track, I may begin recording the album at the end of March and start shooting probably next summer.”

Banderas said it would be a challenge to follow the critically acclaimed stage performance of Michael Crawford in the role.

“I saw [Crawford] in London a month after he opened there and the job he did was awesome,” Banderas recalled. Still, he believes audiences can accept change.

“In movies, you have an opportunity to create a universe in [which] this character lived, so it should change slightly,” he said. “So the challenge will probably take me to a monastery to prepare my voice. I’m going to stop smoking, do everything I can to convince those people who loved Michael Crawford that the character can be played in a different way.”

The Phantom, like Zorro, is a character who exudes sexuality, but Banderas shrugs when asked about being a sex symbol.

“I don’t care,” Banderas remarked. “It doesn’t bother me and doesn’t make me feel like a superhero. It’s just a question of time, anyway. There’s going to be a moment when I start losing my hair, when I start getting a little fatter.”

When asked if he’s happy, Banderas hesitates. “Happy is a very serious word. I think I’m a person who is philosophical. I am a joyful person. Happiness is like a breeze that comes to your face once in a while. But I am satisfied with my life, especially with my family.”

About his life with Griffith, he recalls the beginning of their relationship a few years ago, when he was still married to his first wife, Spanish actress Ana Leza, and the tabloids were ablaze.

“In the beginning, it was a little bit scandalous,” Banderas said. “Finally, people are realizing that our relationship is not an affair.”

Since the birth of their daughter, Stella, in September of 1996 (Griffith also has two children from prior marriages), life for the couple has calmed considerably.

“We keep a very low-profile family life,” he said. “Once in a while, [the tabloids] invent something.” There have been times, he said, when people would tap their phones or sit in a tree trying to take photos of Griffith stepping out of the bathroom.

“At the beginning you laugh,” Banderas said, “but you’ve got spies around you and you feel the presence of that guy there. It’s very uncomfortable. You start acting differently. You say, ‘Oh, if I drink a little more at this party, what are they going to say?’ So, you start losing your natural way.”

Zorro might interest such a person.

Like Superman, Zorro has two personas. Superman is really Clark Kent. Zorro, however, has been many different people over the years (even a woman). The character of Zorro--which is Spanish for “fox”--had its beginnings in 1919 with “The Curse of Capistrano.” It was written by a police reporter named Johnston McCulley, who turned out pulp fiction on the side. It was said that McCulley envisioned Zorro as a compilation of Robin Hood, the Scarlet Pimpernel and such real-life figures of the Old West as Joaquin Murrieta, Salomon Maria Simeon Pico and Jose Maria Avila.

It didn’t take Hollywood long to discover Zorro’s drawing power. In 1920, Douglas Fairbanks Sr., in an impressive performance that still amazes stuntmen, starred in “The Mark of Zorro.” He was followed two decades later by Tyrone Power. But the Zorro most Baby Boomers recall was Guy Williams, who beginning in 1957, appeared in Walt Disney’s popular “Zorro” TV series.

Yet it took Spielberg to get a new Zorro film off the ground.

Banderas had been attached to the project early on, as had his “Desperado” director Rodriguez, but when Rodriguez withdrew, Amblin and Sony set their sights on Campbell.

As it happened, Campbell had worked on “GoldenEye” with John Calley, when Calley was running MGM/UA. The film had grossed over $350 million worldwide for United Artists and helped rejuvenate the Bond franchise. When Calley was hired to run Sony Pictures, one of his first moves was to greenlight “The Mask of Zorro.”

In the film, Hopkins plays an aging Don Diego de la Vega who, after being imprisoned for 20 years, comes across his now-grown daughter [Zeta-Jones], who was taken from him in infancy and raised by Don Raphael Montero [Stuart Wilson], the powerful ex-Spanish governor who cost de la Vega his freedom and also his wife’s life.

Freed, de la Vega chances to meet Alejandro Murrieta [Banderas], a young bandit whose brother was murdered by Montero’s troops. De la Vega, who became a legend in the Mexican countryside for helping the peasants resist tyranny, decides to groom Alejandro as his replacement as they map plans for revenge.

The filmmakers couldn’t believe their good fortune when Hopkins accepted the role of the elder Zorro.

“It was a good script, good action part,” Hopkins, 60, said matter-of-factly. “And I just happen to have been lumped in roles where I have been dead from the kneecaps up--I’ve had enough of those.”

Hopkins is quick to point out that “The Mask of Zorro” is not his first action film. In “The Edge,” he and Alec Baldwin played men who were lost in the wilderness battling a bear, the elements and each other.

For the leading female role, the filmmakers selected Zeta-Jones, 28, a relatively unknown actress in the U.S. who is still amazed at how fortune smiled upon her.

“On a Sunday evening, Steven [Spielberg] tends to watch a bit of TV, as opposed to everything else the man can do,” she recalled. “He saw me in a miniseries called ‘The Titanic’ and rang the director of ‘Zorro’ the next day and said, ‘We should see this girl.”’

Two weeks after Spielberg spotted her, Zeta-Jones was in Mexico learning how to ride and being put through arduous paces in the blazing heat.

She recalled how sorry she felt for Banderas, who in one of their playfully passionate scenes, was dressed all in black. “At least my clothes come off,” she said. As the scene unfolds, Banderas, enamored of Zeta-Jones’s character, the gorgeous Elena, engages her in a feisty duel and, although she more than manages to stand her ground, he skillfully slices away her outer garments.

Photography began in late January 1997 at Churubusco Studios in Mexico City, but later expanded to such locales as the San Blas hacienda outside the tiny pueblo of Lopez Mateos in Tlaxcala, the Tetlapayac hacienda outside Pachuca in the state of Hidalgo and along the beaches of Guaymas. The shoot lasted 98 days.

“We were always in very remote areas of Mexico,” recalled screenwriter Ward. “We had to drive an hour or an hour-and-a-half to the set. The wind would start to blow and you’d get dirt in your eyes and you felt your nostrils and eyes were caked with dust. . . . You felt like you were in a Sergio Leone film.”

As the film unfolds, Banderas’ character is a cocky bandit--and not a very good bandit at that--but under Hopkins’ guidance, he transforms himself from a vengeful gutter rat into a skilled swordsman, a man who measures his actions and a man who can pass as an aristocrat.

Banderas said he enjoyed the “childish aspect” of his character the most, “when he is pretending that he is Zorro, but he’s not Zorro yet.”

Hopkins said he simply wanted to have fun. “Acting is not as complicated as people make it,” he said. And he used his spare time to practice the intricacies of the whip.

“I’d wear goggles or sunglasses because early in practice [the whip] comes around and snaps you and it stings,” he said. It took two weeks, but the actor became so adept with the whip that he was able to snuff out a flame flickering on a candle. “That scene took maybe a day,” he recalled.

The film also called for lots of swordplay.

Banderas admits there was some “relative danger” in the scenes.

“If you are fighting with real swords for one hour in the morning, you’re feeling great and focused, [but] after 14 hours working, you start being a little less focused,” he said. “I think I was bleeding practically every day we did sword fights.”

Banderas knows the risks in predicting whether a movie will be a hit or not, but says: “With Zorro, we have a winning horse, but we have to race it first.”