In a touching speech at the Hollywood Film Awards, actress Dakota Johnson thanked her former stepfather Antonio Banderas for bringing his “bright light” to her family.
On Sunday, Banderas won the Hollywood Actor Award for his new film Pain and Glory, which reunites him with The Skin I Live In director Pedro Almodóvar. Johnson, his stepdaughter from his marriage to Melanie Griffith, presented him with the trophy. Though Griffith and Banderas split up after 20 years together in 2015, Johnson still considers the actor family.
"I come from a family of many a marriage and I got very lucky," Johnson, whose biological father is Watchmen star Don Johnson, told the audience. "I got a bonus dad who I realized that, over time, is actually one of the most influential people in my whole life. When I was six years old, my mother married a man who brought an unbelievably bright light, a whole new world of creativity and culture and one remarkably magical little sister in to our family."
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She got emotional in the speech as she detailed Banderas’ dedication to his craft.
"Antonio taught me about true passion and discipline," a teary Johnson explained. "He would spend hours, and days even, in his office trying to get to the nucleus of something he had become interested in, or a role he was preparing."
Banderas accepted the award, which he dedicated to Johnson and Stella Banderas, he and Griffith’s 23-year-old daughter. He noted that he wanted to thank Johnson specifically for continuing to call him “papi,” all these years later.
"You have no idea how much I love that!" the actor said at the award show.
Banderas previously echoed Johnson’s statement about family in an interview with Vulture.
“I am not married with Melanie anymore but she is my family,” he told the outlet. “She is probably one of my best friends, if not the best friend that I have. My family is there, Dakota [Johnson], Little Estella and Alexander.”