Javier Bardem

Javier Bardem
Bardem at the 2007 Toronto International Film Festival
Born	Javier Angel Encinas Bardem March 1, 1969 (1969-03-01) (age 41) Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain
Occupation	Actor
Years active	1990–present
Spouse	Penélope Cruz (m. 2010–present)

Javier Ángel Encinas Bardem (Spanish pronunciation: [xaˈβjer βarˈðen];^[1][2] born March 1, 1969) is a Spanish actor. He has garnered critical acclaim for roles in films such as Jamón, jamón, Carne tremula, Boca a boca, Los Lunes al sol and Mar adentro.

Bardem has been awarded an Academy Award, a Golden Globe, a Screen Actors Guild Award, a BAFTA, four Goya awards, two European Film Awards, a Prize for Best Actor at Cannes and two Coppa Volpis at Venice for his work. He is the first Spaniard to be nominated for an Oscar (Best Actor, 2000, for Before Night Falls) as well as the first to win (Supporting Actor, 2007, for No Country for Old Men).

Early life

Bardem was born in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain, the son of Carlos Encinas and the actress Pilar Bardem.^[3] Bardem comes from a long line of filmmakers and actors who have been working since the earliest days of Spanish cinema; he is the grandson of actors Rafael Bardem and Matilde Muñoz Sampedro, and the nephew of screenwriter and director Juan Antonio Bardem.^[4] Both his older brother and his older sister, Carlos and Mónica Bardem, are actors. His film debut was at the age of six and a half in the film El Pícaro (The Scoundrel) and he appeared in several television series before turning to painting and, eventually, sports. Before acting professionally, Bardem was a member of the underage Spanish national rugby team.^[5]

Career

Javier Bardem, Festimad 2007

Bardem starred in his second major motion picture, The Ages of Lulu, when he was 20. In 1992, he made his first international hit with Jamón, jamón, which also starred Penélope Cruz. His first English language speaking role came in 1997 with director Alex de la Iglesia's Perdita Durango, playing a santeria-practicing bank robber. After starring in roughly two dozen films in his native country, he eventually landed his international breakthrough in Julian Schnabel's Before Night Falls in 2000, as Cuban poet Reinaldo Arenas. He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for the role, the first time for a Spaniard. In 2002 he starred in John Malkovich's directorial debut, The Dancer Upstairs.

Bardem won the Best Actor at the Venice Film Festival for his role in 2004's Mar Adentro, released in the United States as The Sea Inside, in which he portrayed the quadriplegic turned assisted-suicide activist Ramón Sampedro. That year he also made a brief appearance as a crime lord who summons Tom Cruise's hitman to do the dirty work of dispatching witnesses in Michael Mann's crime drama Collateral. 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 killer, Anton Chigurh. For that role, he became the first 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.^[6] Chigurh was named #26 in Entertainment Weekly magazine's 2008 "50 Most Vile Villains in Movie History" list.^[7]

He starred with Cruz and others in Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008). Bardem was in talks to play fictional filmmaker Guido Contini in the film adaptation of the Broadway musical Nine; the part eventually went to Daniel Day-Lewis.^[8] In 2010, he is awarded Best Actor at the Cannes Film Festival for his performance in Biutiful directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu.

It was speculated that he would guest-star on the second season of Glee as a rock star who befriends Artie. He will indeed appear in the show in 2011. ^[9]

Personal life

Bardem does not know how to drive and consistently refers to himself as a "worker" and not an actor.^[10] Following the legalization of same-sex marriage in Spain in 2005, Bardem incited controversy when he stated that if he were gay, he would "get married tomorrow, just to fuck with the Church" (mañana mismo, sólo para joder a la Iglesia).^[11] Bardem's life's work was honored at the 2007 Gotham Awards, produced by Independent Feature Project. Bardem began dating then co-star Penélope Cruz in 2007, although the couple has maintained a low public profile.^[12] According to the Associated Press, the two were married in July 2010 in the Bahamas.^[13]

Filmography

See also

• List of Spanish Academy Award winners and nominees

References

External links

• Javier Bardem at the Internet Movie Database