Javier Bardem
February 2003
Madrid

Even before most people in the States knew how to pronounce his name, there was considerable buzz being spread about Javier Bardem for his role as the brilliant and flamboyant Cuban writer Reynaldo Arenas in 2000's Before Night Falls. Not that Bardem exploded out of nowhere; the actor comes from a dynasty of entertainers in his native Spain. His grandparents, mother and older siblings all pursued acting while uncle Juan Antonio thwarted the Franco regime (and paid the price with repeated arrests) with the films he wrote and directed alongside colleague Luis Buñuel. This history has instilled Bardem with not only a keen sensibility for his art but a social conscience interested more in the reality of human nature rather than it's glossed-up, facetious and more common Hollywood depiction, demonstrated in the nature of the films he elects to participate in, including this year's The Dancer Upstairs and Mondays in the Sun.

Bardem's track record includes more than 25 films (most of them blockbusters in his native Spain), a handful of Goya Awards and 2001 Best Actor Golden Globe and Oscar nominations for Before Night Falls - a stunning introduction to American cinema for his very first English-language role. The whole thing almost didn't happen given Bardem's early protests to director Julian Schnabel - not over Arenas' homosexuality, controversial nature or illness with AIDS but Bardem's own limitations with a foreign tongue. Ironically, John Malkovich approached Bardem even before Schnabel, because although Bardem was hardly a blip on Hollywood's radar five years ago, Malkovich considered him the perfect star for The Dancer Upstairs (which hit U.S. theaters in April). Malkovich's directorial debut is an ambitious adaptation of Nicholas Shakespeare's novel based on the capture of a notorious Peruvian guerilla leader.

Even while Bardem was portraying what could be considered beefcake roles in the likes of Bigas Luna's Jamón Jamón and Almodovar's Live Flesh, those characters were anything but hunks of meat. Bardem's own idiosyncrasies - the actor who doesn't want to be recognized, the sex symbol who doesn't feel attractive - are apparent in these roles, proving there is much more to him than meets the eye, as he discussed earlier this year via phone from his home in Madrid.

I've been trying to get a hold of you since last year, when I saw Dancer Upstairs at Sundance, so I'm glad that it's worked out this time. I'm also very glad that I get to talk to you now about Mondays in the Sun, which is an incredible movie in its own right. Congratulations on the Goyas it won.

Thank you.

You're very welcome. The first question I have for you takes me back to the first time we met, which was in 2000. It was the Los Angeles press day for Before Night Falls at the Four Seasons, and we were all sitting down to a roundtable discussion. You were being very good about answering some very stupid questions.

[Laughs]

Somebody asked why you thought so many women were attracted to Latin men…and what followed was one of the most uncomfortable moments that I've ever experienced because you were so taken aback. It was a really stupid question for one thing, and secondly you just didn't seem capable of answering something like that. But on the other hand, being unafraid to make a stance against the war like you did at the Goya Awards ceremony, and speaking about the Communist past of your uncle and the way that your family has withstood political pressure over the years - all that, to me, seems totally second nature to you. It's very interesting how you can be so political yet have such a hard time handling celebrity or handling the sex symbol kind of label. Has it gotten easier to handle the celebrity on a physical level or are you still as uncomfortable about it as you were back then?

Well, if you saw, for example, Mondays in the Sun, you would have a good idea about how much importance I give to the fact of being sexy onscreen, which is none, basically for two reasons: The first one is that I truly consider myself non-sexy, which is fine for me. I don't have any problem with that.

Sometimes I would like to have Brad Pitt's body - I find him extremely sexy. But that's not something that obsesses me in a real way. And second, I truly believe that what I would like to portray onscreen or on stage are human beings, and human beings usually are not as handsome as movie stars. Like, for example, Mondays In the Sun, which has people from real life - we are quite normal. Sometimes characters really push you to be handsome because it's one of the circumstances of the character. But most other times being handsome onscreen or being handsome in promotion or being handsome for whatever, for real life, has to do much more with your vanity and your profound need to be liked by the rest of the people, be loved by the rest of the people.

That "second nature," like you said about the political thing - I haven't been very political, but I think that we are living in a moment now in the world where you can't avoid to really identify yourself, define yourself. Because the world is - how would I say this?

Because there is so much politics right now, because of the war?

Yes, and also the world because of the globalization and because of the terrorist acts of September 11th, which was very huge and tremendous and very dramatic. The world now is more than ever going separate ways - I mean, being truly opposite, the sides. What I mean is, now there is more than ever good and evil. And the ones who say they are good - like for example Mr. Bush - in my opinion he's a very bad president. A very bad president and a person who is not paying attention to the fact that revenge is a word that any politician should not have in his dictionary. I suppose it must be very difficult to be president of the United States after September 11th, but in my opinion that's not a reason to find excuses to bomb a country like Iraq. Because this moment - today, the moment we are talking now - there is no evidence at all. That's my opinion; I suppose there must be a lot of people who would say the contrary and that's fine.

Now we're living in a moment where more than ever we are confront to each other, where you are with us or against us, and that's bad. It's a very extreme moment, a very violent moment. I'm not American but if you are American, if you say you are against the war then you are a pro-terrorist person. That's not fair. The person who says that is not on war's side. So, what I felt at the Goya ceremony is that we have the right, first of all, and the responsibility to say what we think, not because we do think we are that important that we're going to change people's minds - not at all - but because we are citizens also and that's a right that every citizen has, to say what they think.

Exactly. But I find it very interesting that you say that you have not been political when, by virtue of the roles you've chosen in the films that you've done, you're being a lot more political than 90% of the people here in America who just sit around and do nothing. And somebody like me can't do what you can do because you are in the spotlight, but I do what I can. Yet there are so many people here and probably in Spain and in Europe and around the world who just don't do anything. You are enacting your political beliefs in what you do every day. So when you say to me you're not political, it doesn't seem like that's an accurate assessment of yourself.

No, of course - I truly don't think I am. I've done movies where I play action heroes or whatever in Spain, but in the States you know me only for two movies, Before Night Falls and Dancer Upstairs, and now some people maybe will see Mondays In the Sun. Yes, in these three movies I'm playing a role where I have some political influence. Let's say that political circumstance is pushing the characters to act a certain way, so they have a real connection and interact with the political circumstances they are living in. But basically that's not something that I choose as an actor. I would say that they are the most interesting roles that I've received because it's not something that I'm looking for, it's something that I just find. [Chuckling] I would love to make a romantic comedy or something like that but I suspect that most of them are stupid and make no sense.

Yeah - and they just want you to run around naked and be brainless.

Which is fine, because we are talking about entertainment, but basically for me as an actor I don't have any interest. So, for that reason, maybe I'm more of a political person than I ever thought, which I wouldn't like because that means I'll be offered less movies. [Laughs]

But instead of being political I would call it being profoundly interested in human beings. To me, human beings are very complex, and I love that complexity. And to act - to try, at least - to act that complexity is a dream that I have as an actor, so the only thing that I demand from a script is that little complexity.

You're right, it is very interesting. Watching Mondays In the Sun I couldn't figure out how I felt about Santa. I wanted to like him but sometimes he annoyed me. Usually I've pretty much gone along with the characters you've portrayed, but one of the things that stuck with me about Mondays In the Sun is that yours wasn't such a clear-cut character.

Oh, yes.