Antonio Banderas had a familiar face beside him when he brought his new movie to Toronto.
The 66-year-old actor attended the September 17th world premiere of Up Against It at the Toronto International Film Festival with his daughter Stella Banderas, 29. The father and daughter posed together on the red carpet in coordinated dark looks, with Stella making one of her relatively uncommon major-event appearances, according to E! News.
Stella wore a long-sleeved black dress with an asymmetric neckline and sunglasses, while Banderas paired a black suit with a black shirt covered in white stars. The two smiled together outside Roy Thomson Hall before heading inside for the screening.
Although Stella grew up around actors, movie sets and red carpets as the daughter of Banderas and Melanie Griffith, she has shown considerably more interest in working behind the camera than becoming an actress herself.
Stella Joined Antonio for His ‘Up Against It’ World Premiere
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Stella joined her father specifically for the Toronto premiere of Up Against It, where Banderas was promoting the new film from director Trudie Styler. PEOPLE reported that the father and daughter posed together before the screening.
Up Against It stars Banderas and Eva Birthistle as divorced parents whose already strained relationship is complicated when their teenage daughter becomes seriously ill. Faced with an extraordinary medical proposal that could help save her, the former couple has to consider having another child together.
Forest Whitaker, Úrsula Corberó, Arinzé Kene, Eden Hamilton and Richard E. Grant are also among the cast. The role gave Banderas another prominent TIFF appearance years after Pain and Glory brought him an Academy Award nomination.
Stella Has Preferred Working Behind the Camera
Stella technically has an acting credit, but it dates back to childhood. She played Marilyn in the 1999 film Crazy in Alabama, which marked her father’s feature directorial debut and starred her mother, Melanie Griffith. Her half-sister Dakota Johnson also appeared in the movie.
Banderas said in 2025 that Stella was far more interested in directing than performing. “Stella is not so much of an actress,” he said, according to E! News. “She wants to be behind the camera.”
He said she had already made commercials and was working on short films, adding that he expected she could eventually direct a feature. That interest has already taken her into professional production work. Stella served as second assistant director on her father’s Spanish-language staging of Stephen Sondheim’s Company in Málaga, according to the production’s official credits.
Her biography for the show also notes that she studied acting at the Stella Adler Studio of Acting in New York before studying narrative work at the University of Southern California, giving her experience on both sides of the camera even as directing became the clearer focus.
Red Carpets With Her Dad Have Been Occasional, Not Unprecedented
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Stella has joined her father at several major industry events before. She accompanied Banderas to the 2020 Academy Awards, where he was nominated for Best Actor for his performance in Pedro Almodóvar’s Pain and Glory. The two also walked the red carpet together at the opening ceremony of the San Sebastián International Film Festival in September 2021.
More recently, Stella’s biggest family event happened away from a movie premiere. She married her longtime partner Alex Gruszynski on October 18th, 2025, at Abadía Retuerta LeDomaine in Sardón de Duero, Spain, with both Banderas and Griffith there for the celebration.
The couple had known each other since childhood, and Banderas walked his daughter down the aisle during the ceremony. Six months later, the extended family was together again in Los Angeles. On April 27th, Banderas shared a photograph of himself with Stella, Gruszynski and Griffith, describing the actress as his “ex-wife and lifelong friend.”
“A lovely and fun moment yesterday in Los Angeles with my son-in-law Alex, my daughter Stella, and my ex-wife and lifelong friend, Melanie,” he wrote.