In The Mask of Zorro Antonio Banderas plays outlaw Alejandro Murietta, who is groomed by the legendary but ageing Zorro - Don Diego de la Vega, played by Anthony Hopkins - to right fresh wrongs being committed against the people of Spanish-ruled California. Banderas takes up the mask, not to mention the sword and whip of Zorro, and leaps onto the jet-black stallion, Tornado, with apparently effortless ease. It was, said Janet Maslin of the New York Times, "a role he was born to play!"