Antonio Banderas shows off his dance moves

He may be suave, he may be sexy, but don't try to convince Antonio Banderas he's a good dancer.

"I'm just an actor who pretends to dance and that's all," Banderas says. "I'm not a swordfighter either. Or a horse rider or any of those things that I have done in [the movies]. I am good at learning choreography. But, it's just pretending."

It was meeting real-life dance educator Pierre Dulaine that convinced Banderas to star in the new crowd pleaser "Take the Lead." Almost 10 years ago, Dulaine volunteered to teach New York City elementary school kids the fine art of ballroom dancing in a program designed to bring etiquette and discipline to a whole new generation. The program was chronicled in last year's doc "Mad Hot Ballroom," but "Lead" is inspired by Dulaine's actual first class, although, for entertainment purposes, the 8-year-olds have been transformed into high school students.

Banderas says Dulaine didn't want to have the spotlight before the movie, "but now he's going to have it. He started with eight kids, and now he has 9,000 across the United States with 34 professors. The idea is working, and I was very interested in the story ever since I met him."

Ironically, the actor's mother presided over ballroom-dancing competitions all across Europe while he was growing up.

"She always invited me to go, but I never wanted to," Banderas says. "It was sort of boring for me."

Age has increased his enthusiasm, so much so that he didn't mind doing the tango this time around.

"It's very risky sometimes. You get to pick up a girl and just throw her," Banderas says, laughing. "Tango is the most difficult and challenging dance, and it is the one I like the most. It's very beautiful."

When not occasionally dancing the tango with his wife, Melanie Griffith, Banderas expects to spend more of his free time directing movies. He is currently in the middle of editing his second directorial effort, "El Camino de los ingleses," a coming-of-age tale that was filmed in his hometown of Malaga, Spain. The independently financed picture doesn't have a distributor, but Banderas is already eyeing where to premiere it.

"I think we deserve to go to Venice," he says of the acclaimed film festival. "I think I have a movie that can be [one of the] 16 movies that can go, but that is my opinion of course. I think I have something very special on my hands."

His fans might say the same thing of "Lead."

"Take the Lead" opens nationwide April 7.