Elena Montero
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Elena Montero or Elena Murrieta is a fictional character from "The Mask of Zorro", the feisty daughter of the original Zorro (Anthony Hopkins) and lover to his student (Antonio Banderas). This was the star making role for tall (5'8"), shapely Welsh actress Catherine Zeta-Jones, who managed to compliment her dark hair and dark eyes with a pitch perfect Spanish accent.
When the evil Raphael invades Don Diego's (Hopkins) home, one of his men kills her mother by accident. Raphael kills the soldier, has Don Diego imprisoned and takes the infant Elena as his own daughter.
As a beautiful, 21 year old adult with no knowledge of her true family, Elena first encounters the second Zorro (Banderas) when he steals some horses on his first night out and again, without realizing it, when he is hiding as a confessional priest and again when he is posing as an aristocrat and shares a passionate dance with him.
She sees him again when he breaks into her false father's home to steal plans and confronts him in the stable, wearing an angelic white dress and armed with a sword, demanding he return what he has stolen. When he politely refuses, she challenges him to a duel. Having had the proper instruction from the age of 4, she holds her own well and manages to slice his sleeve, but when he slices her skirt, kisses her, slices off a shoulder strap and kisses her again, her temper gets the better of her, costing Elena her sword and a bit of her pride/dignity when Zorro uses his sword to slice up the rest of her dress. At first suspecting nothing, the slightest movement of Elena's arms causes her mutilated white dress to fall apart, leaving her stark naked, with the exception of her long knee length pantaloons in the stable. With a humiliated gasp, she tries to cover her cleavage with Zorro's hat, but she is too drawn to him to actually be angry and they share a passionate kiss before Zorro makes off his hat, leaving her in the stable.
Elena comes back in the finale to help Zorro, learns the truth of her parentage and marries her lover.
