Five years later he went on to appear in the director’s Law of Desire, making headlines with his performance as a gay man, which required him to engage in his first male-to-male onscreen kiss. as a mental patient who kidnaps a porn star (Victoria Abril) and keeps her tied up until she returns his love. It was his breakthrough role in Tie Me Up. Banderas’ having become a regular feature of Almodóvar’s movies all throughout the 1980s, Almodóvar is credited for helping launch Banderas’s international career. in 2002, he starred in Brian De Palma’s Femme Fatale opposite Rebecca Romijn-Stamos and in Julie Taymor’s Frida with Salma Hayek. Banderas’ debut as a director was the poorly-received Crazy in Alabama (1999), starring his wife Melanie Griffith.
