Javier Bardem

Javier Ángel Encinas Bardem was born 1 March 1969 in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria in the Canary Islands (Spain).

He starred in his first major motion picture, The Ages of Lulu, when he was 20. He was propelled to fame in 1992 by his role as a potential underwear model and would-be bullfighter in Jamón, jamón, which also starred a teenage Penélope Cruz.

His talent did not go unnoticed in the English-speaking world. In 1997, John Malkovich was the first to approach the then 27-year-old for a role in English, but Bardem turned down the offer because his English was poor.

His first English-speaking role came in 1997, with director Alex de la Iglesia's Perdita Durango, playing a santeria-practicing bank robber. After starring in about two dozen films in his native country, he gained international recognition in Julian Schnabel's Before Night Falls in 2000, portraying Cuban poet Reinaldo Arenas. He received praises from (his idol) Al Pacino, the message was left on Bardem's answering machine which he considers one of the most beautiful gifts he's ever received.

For the role he got nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor, a first time for a Spaniard. Immediately after, he turned down the role of "Witwer" in Minority Report which eventually went to Colin Farrell.

In 2002 instead he starred in John Malkovich's directorial debut, The Dancer Upstairs. Malkovich (who first approached Bardem in 1997) originally had him in mind for the role of the detective's assistant, but since the movie took so long to get financed it gave Bardem time to learn English and take on the lead role of the detective. "I will always be grateful to him because he really gave me my very first chance to work in English," Bardem said of Malkovich.



Bardem won Best Actor at the Venice Film Festival for his role in Mar Adentro (2004), released in the United States as The Sea Inside, in which he portrayed the quadriplegic turned assisted suicide activist Ramón Sampedro. He  made his Hollywood debut in a brief appearance as a crime lord who summons Tom Cruise's hitman to do the dirty work of dispatching witnesses in the crime drama Collateral. He stars in Miloš Forman's 2006 film Goya's Ghosts opposite Natalie Portman, where he plays a twisted monk during the Spanish Inquisition.

In 2007, Bardem acted in two film adaptations: the Coen Brothers' No Country for Old Men, and the adaptation of the Colombian novel Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez. In No Country for Old Men, he played a sociopathic assassin, Anton Chigurh. For that role, he became the first Spanish actor and Spaniard to win an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. He also won a Golden Globe Award and Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Award for Best Supporting Actor, the Critics' Choice Award for Best Supporting Actor, and the 2008 British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) Award for Best Supporting Actor. Bardem's rendition of Chigurh's trademark phrase, "Call it, friendo," was named Top HollyWORDIE of 2007 in the annual survey by the Global Language Monitor. Chigurh was named #26 in Entertainment Weekly magazine's 2008 "50 Most Vile Villains in Movie History" list. Bardem's life's work was honored at the 2007 Gotham Awards, produced by Independent Feature Project.



Francis Ford Coppola singled out Bardem as an heir to, and even an improvement on, Al Pacino, Jack Nicholson and Robert de Niro referring to Bardem as ambitious and hungry, unwilling to rest on his laurels and always "excited to do something good". Bardem was attached to play the role of Tetro's mentor in Coppola's film Tetro, but the director felt the character should be female so he was replaced by fellow Spaniard Carmen Maura. Bardem was originally cast to play fictional filmmaker Guido Contini in the film adaptation of the Broadway musical Nine, but dropped out due to exhaustion.


The part eventually went to Daniel Day-Lewis. He went on to star alongside Penelope Cruz and Scarlett Johansson in Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008).

In 2010, he was awarded Best Actor at the Cannes Film Festival for his performance in Biutiful directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu, who specifically wrote the film with Bardem in mind. After being overlooked by the Globes and SAG, Bardem was the unexpected Oscar nominee on 25 January 2011, becoming the first all Spanish-language Best Actor nominee ever. 

February, 2012
INTERVIEW: Javier Bardem calls for awareness of Western Sahara conflict

Berlin (dpa)

– The conflict in the Western Sahara region, which Morocco annexed in 1975, has become “invisible” because of strategic and economic interests.

Bardem speaks to dpa about how the idea of making a documentary about the almost forgotten conflict came to him after a 2008 visit to refugee camps, home to thousands of people from Western Sahara. Despite a 1991 ceasefire between Morocco and rebel group Polisario Front, the dispute over the territory has not been resolved.

Hijos de las Nubes: La Ultima Colonia (Sons of the Clouds: The Last Colony) was shown at the Berlin Film Festival.



Bardem: The first time I went to refugee camps I spent a week in the home of a family, with children and people who give you everything, all they have. And then you go and leave them there. And the faces of those people are showing a really honest feeling of sadness and pain, but also of joy, because you have shared their reality. This, when you get on the bus, makes you say to yourself that something must be done.



Bardem: The Sahara case is absolutely invisible and that is what we wanted to humbly tell – why it is so. That invisibility is due to Morocco having the backing of France, which has a right of veto at the United Nations. It is a contradiction, given that we are talking about one of the fundamental countries in elevating human rights and the emergence of freedoms. And all of that, for a partnership consisting of geopolitical, strategic, economic needs and interests. That is what is so frustrating about it.



Bardem: We asked ourselves, where is common sense? We wanted to try to talk about Sahara, but also about other conflicts such as Syria where in the end, the dead are the same – the civilian population – and the players, those who divide the cards between themselves, are also the same. Common sense is lost in the name of this “Realpolitik.” For this reason, the documentary for me is like a trip to understand what was behind it all, and to offer the explanation to others.



Bardem: Everything took shape as we went along, we began investigating, we went with the camera and filmed, but without knowing what it was all for. The film was born sort of involuntarily. We did not plan to do a “movie” or a “documentary,” it just made itself.







Bardem: I find it extraordinary, it is a way of recognizing this strong change that is taking place in the world, which has to do with human rights and the freedom of expression, and which concerns us all.



Bardem: There comes a moment when you need to do what you feel, even if there are very difficult moments when it is almost better not to do it. I remember, for instance, the first demonstrations of the (Spanish protest movement) 15-M. Obviously, one shares all or much of what is being said there, but you cannot show up. You must not, because the cameras will focus on you, and you don’t represent anybody.





 

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WIPO Director General Francis Gurry and Javier talk about the protection of actors' rights and a future international treaty to protect audiovisual performances (excerpt from July 19, 2011 Press Conference at WIPO).