Javier Bardem finds world fame
2008-02-22 15:50
Madrid - He's played an aspiring bullfighter, a macho hunk, a quadriplegic fighting for the right to die and now a psychotic killer.
Spanish actor Javier Bardem is nothing if not versatile.
For more than 20 years, Bardem has been notching up awards at home but seemed to steer shy of world fame. Now, in his role as a hitman in the Coen brothers' No Country for Old Men, he's on worldwide roll with his second Oscar nomination.
Last month alone, the Canary Island-born actor bagged two important trophies for his supporting role in No Country. On January 13 he became the first Spanish actor to receive a Golden Globe Award.
Two weeks later he won the Screen Actors Guild Award. This month, he added a British Academy Film Award to the pile.
Despite the accolades, Bardem has said he has little interest in awards.
When he became the first Spanish actor to be nominated for an Oscar in 2005 for his performance in Julian Schnabel's Before Night Falls, Bardem said winning "is not important."
"It is more important that bombings stop in Iraq, that the United States respect the Kyoto Accord, or that international observers be allowed to Guantanamo," he told The Associated Press.
Bardem, 38, hails from a family steeped in film and theatre - his mother, brother and sister are actors, too.
Forthright about politics
Although known to be amiable and almost retiring in person, the tough-looking Bardem has always been forthright about his political feelings. Both he and his mother were prominent in protests against the Iraq war.
On gay rights, he was once quoted as saying that if he were homosexual he'd get married just to offend the Catholic Church.
A supporter of Doctors Without Borders, he recently produced a documentary entitled The Invisibles, a hard-hitting series of shorts by five directors, among them Wim Wenders, on conflicts and human rights causes.
On the screen, he built up an impressive portfolio with appearances in major Spanish films like Pedro Almodavar's Carne Tremula (Live Flesh) and Gerardo Vera's Second Skin, in which he demonstrated his chameleon-like abilities.
The new millennium transformed Bardem's career.
Recognition from across the Atlantic came fast with his role as exiled gay Cuban poet Reinaldo Arenas in Before Night Falls in 2000. The movie was Bardem's first English-language speaking role. Two years later he starred in John Malkovich's directorial debut, The Dancer Upstairs.
He went on to turn in two strong performances as an unemployed shipyard worker in with Mondays in the Sun (2003). Two years later, he had another breakthrough role in The Sea Inside, where he played the real-life quadriplegic Ramon Sampedro, who campaigned for the right to kill himself.
It was a role that obliged Bardem to add 20 years to his looks and spend the film bedridden and only able to use his head.
He won Goya best-actor honours for both films, while The Sea Inside earned him best actor awards at the European Film Awards and the Venice Film Festival.
Besides No Country Bardem stars in the film version of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's novel Love in the Time of Cholera with Penelope Cruz, and in the upcoming Woody Allen film Vicky Cristina Barcelona with Scarlet Johansson.
- AP