Javier Bardem

• 1. Introduction

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  In 1989, the Spanish actor Javier Bardem put on a Superman costume for a sketch on the comedy show El Día Por Delante. The job left him wondering whether he wanted to be an actor at all. That doubt makes sense for a man who never planned to join the family trade. Painting was his chosen craft, and he studied it for four years at Madrid's Escuela de Artes y oficios. He took acting work mainly to pay for the painting. During those lean years he even spent a single day working as a stripper. In time he decided he was a bad painter and let the career go. This documentary follows the man who left the easel behind. How did a reluctant performer become an actor with major awards from Hollywood and European festivals? Why does someone who has played so many killers and villains speak of hating violence? And what does he do with his voice when the cameras are off? The answers begin in a family where performing was simply ordinary.

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• 2. A Family Of Performers

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  Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, in Spain's Canary Islands, is where Javier Bardem was born on the 1st of March 1969. His mother, Pilar Bardem, was an actress who lived from 1939 to 2021. His father, José Carlos Encinas Doussinague, was the son of a cattle rancher from the province of Salamanca.

  Pilar's memoirs describe her husband as having a "capricious and violent will." She recalled that he once shot up the front door of their home. He changed jobs more than ten times, which brought evictions and, at times, hungry children. The couple separated shortly after Javier was born. Pilar raised him alone, together with his elder siblings Carlos and Mónica, who have both gone on to act. Another child had died shortly after birth.

  Rafael Bardem and Matilde Muñoz Sampedro, Javier's grandparents on his mother's side, were both actors. Matilde's sisters, Mercedes and Guadalupe, were actresses too. The family tree reaches back to the earliest days of Spanish cinema. His uncle Juan Antonio Bardem was a screenwriter and director, and the filmmaker Miguel Bardem is a cousin. The Franco regime imprisoned Juan Antonio over his anti-fascist films. Javier's grandmother raised him in the Roman Catholic faith.

  Childhood meant afternoons in theatres and on film sets. In 1974 Javier made his first television appearance, in a series by Fernando Fernán Gómez known in English as The Scoundrel. He also played rugby for the junior Spanish national team.

  José Carlos Encinas Doussinague died of leukemia in 1995, more than two decades after his son's first television job.

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• 3. Spain First, English Later

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  Bigas Luna directed The Ages of Lulu, the first major film in which Bardem drew attention. He was 21, and his role was small. Luna was impressed enough to build his next picture around him. Bardem also took minor parts in Amo tu cama rica and High Heels.

  In 1992 Luna gave him the male lead in Jamón Jamón, where Bardem played a would-be underwear model and bullfighter. The film starred Penélope Cruz, who would later become his wife, and it was a major international success. He followed it with Sancho Gracia's Huidos and with Luna's Golden Balls in 1993. Spanish audiences also knew him from Boca a boca in 1995 and Carne trémula in 1997.

  In 1997 John Malkovich became the first to approach the 27-year-old Bardem about a role in English. Bardem said no, because his English was still poor. That same year he took his first English-speaking part in Álex de la Iglesia's Perdita Durango, as a bank robber who practiced santería. By then he had starred in about two dozen films at home.

  Julian Schnabel's Before Night Falls, released in 2000, made Bardem an international name. He played the Cuban poet Reinaldo Arenas. His idol Al Pacino praised the performance, and the message Pacino left on Bardem's answering machine is one of the most beautiful gifts he has ever received. The role earned an Oscar nomination for Best Actor, which made him the first Spaniard to be nominated in that category. Right afterward he turned down the part of Danny Witwer in Minority Report, and Colin Farrell took it.

  Malkovich returned in 2002 with The Dancer Upstairs, his first film as a director. He had first imagined Bardem as the detective's assistant. The production spent so long searching for financing that Bardem used the delay to learn English, and he moved up to the lead detective role. Bardem has said, "I will always be grateful to him because he really gave me my very first chance to work in English."

  At the Venice Film Festival, Bardem won Best Actor for Mar Adentro in 2004. The film reached American audiences as The Sea Inside. He played Ramón Sampedro, a quadriplegic man who became an activist for assisted suicide. His Hollywood debut was a brief appearance in the crime drama Collateral, as a crime lord who summons Tom Cruise's hitman to eliminate witnesses.

  In 2006 Miloš Forman cast him opposite Natalie Portman in Goya's Ghosts, as a twisted monk during the Spanish Inquisition.

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• 4. Anton Chigurh

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  In No Country for Old Men, a convenience store owner asks a stranger, "Y'all gettin' any rain up your way?" The stranger answers, "What business is it of yours where I'm from, friendo?" Bardem's delivery of that reply was named Top HollyWORDIE of 2007 in the annual survey by the Global Language Monitor.

  The film by the Coen brothers was one of two adaptations Bardem made in 2007. The other was Love in the Time of Cholera, drawn from the Colombian novel by Gabriel García Márquez, with Giovanna Mezzogiorno. In the Coens' crime film he played Anton Chigurh, a psychopathic assassin. The performance won him the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, and he was the first Spaniard to take that prize. The Golden Globe, the Screen Actors Guild Award and the Critics' Choice Award for Best Supporting Actor followed. So did the 2008 BAFTA for Best Supporting Actor.

  Entertainment Weekly placed Chigurh at No. 26 on its 2008 list of the 50 Most Vile Villains in Movie History. The 2007 Gotham Awards, produced by the Independent Feature Project, honored Bardem's life's work.

  In 2014 the Belgian psychiatry professor Samuel Leistedt and ten associates spent three years watching 400 movies. They identified 126 psychopathic characters, and in their vote Chigurh ranked as the most realistic psychopath of them all.

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• 5. Roads Not Taken

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  Francis Ford Coppola once named Bardem as an heir to Al Pacino, Jack Nicholson and Robert De Niro, and even as an improvement on them. He called Bardem ambitious and hungry, unwilling to rest on past success, and always "excited to do something good."

  Even so, the two men did not make Tetro together. Bardem was attached to play the title character's mentor. Coppola then decided the part should be a woman, and the Spanish actress Carmen Maura took it.

  Exhaustion cost Bardem another role. He was cast as the filmmaker Guido Contini in the film version of the Broadway musical Nine, and then dropped out. Daniel Day-Lewis played the part instead.

  Ron Howard's planned adaptation of Stephen King's Dark Tower novels offered Bardem the lead role of Roland Deschain, the Gunslinger. Had he signed, he would have starred in the television series as well. Universal then chose not to go ahead with the ultra-ambitious project, which was based on eight novels. Meanwhile Eon Productions offered him the villain Raoul Silva in the James Bond film Skyfall. To end months of speculation, Bardem confirmed that part in an interview with Christiane Amanpour on ABC's Nightline.

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• 6. A Long Second Act

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  Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona, released in 2008, paired Bardem with Cruz and Scarlett Johansson. It brought him his fourth Golden Globe nomination.

  Alejandro González Iñárritu wrote Biutiful with Bardem specifically in mind. In 2010 the performance won Bardem Best Actor at the Cannes Film Festival. The Golden Globes and the Screen Actors Guild had overlooked him, so his Oscar nomination on the 25th of January 2011 came as a surprise. He became the first Best Actor nominee for an entirely Spanish-language performance. He also won his fifth Goya Award for the role and dedicated it to Cruz and their newborn son.

  On the 8th of November 2012, Bardem received the 2,484th star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, outside the El Capitan Theatre.

  In 2017 Bardem played the main antagonist, Armando Salazar, in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, the fifth film in that series. That September he starred in Darren Aronofsky's horror film Mother! with Jennifer Lawrence, Michelle Pfeiffer and Ed Harris. It follows a couple whose lives are disrupted by the arrival of unexpected guests. In 2018 he again acted opposite Cruz, this time in Asghar Farhadi's mystery drama Everybody Knows.

  In 2021 Bardem played Stilgar in Denis Villeneuve's Dune. That year he also played Julio Blanco, a manipulative factory boss, in Fernando León de Aranoa's workplace satire The Good Boss. Critics ranked it among the finest performances of his career, and it earned him a Goya Award. Aaron Sorkin's Being the Ricardos, from Amazon Studios, cast him as Desi Arnaz opposite Nicole Kidman as Lucille Ball. His casting drew unfavorable reactions, yet the performance was praised. It brought nominations for the Golden Globe and the Screen Actors Guild Award. It also brought his third Academy Award nomination for Best Actor, the fourth of his career overall.

  Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile arrived in 2022, and Bardem played King Triton in Rob Marshall's live-action Disney remake of The Little Mermaid in 2023. He returned as Stilgar in Dune: Part Two in 2024. He also worked again with Kidman in the Netflix and Skydance Animation film Spellbound. On the 10th of July 2023, Deadline announced he would star with Brad Pitt in F1 for Apple TV+, with Warner Bros. Pictures handling theatrical distribution. The film was released in 2025. He was also set to play Frankenstein's Monster in Bill Condon's remake of Bride of Frankenstein.

  In September 2024 Bardem played José Menendez, father of Lyle and Erik Menendez, in Netflix's Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story. It earned him nominations for the Golden Globe, the Screen Actors Guild Award and a Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie. As an executive producer of the series, he earned a second Emmy nomination.

  That same September, Bardem was receiving his 2023 Donostia Award for career achievement at the 72nd San Sebastián International Film Festival. Asked whether he was available to Spanish filmmakers other than his friend Fernando León, he announced that he had joined Rodrigo Sorogoyen's The Beloved, opposite Victoria Luengo. Filming was due to begin in January 2025 in Fuerteventura. Ahead of the 2025 Cannes Film Market, he was reported to have been cast with Cruz in Florian Zeller's psychological thriller Bunker.

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• 7. Causes And Protest

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  In February 2003, Bardem joined Pedro Almodóvar and other Spanish film figures in the vast anti-war marches in Madrid. Millions protested their government's support for the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. At the 2004 Goya Awards he won Best Actor and used his acceptance speech to urge the Spanish government to withdraw its troops.

  The Sahrawi people of Western Sahara have been a long-running cause. Bardem served as spokesperson for the platform All with the Sahara. It collected signatures asking the Spanish government to "lead the search for a peaceful and just solution to a conflict that affects us directly." He produced and narrated Sons of the Clouds: The Last Colony, a documentary about life in the Sahrawi refugee camps. He publicly denounced the United Nations as unwilling to settle the crisis for good. In July 2025 he objected to the shooting of The Odyssey in Dakhla. He said Morocco had occupied Western Sahara for 50 years and that Dakhla had become a tourist destination and now a film set. In his view the aim was to erase the city's Sahrawi identity. He also signed a manifesto promoted by FiSahara against the shoot.

  During the 2014 Gaza War, Bardem and Cruz signed an open letter denouncing Israel's actions as genocide. In September 2024 he criticized Israel's military operations in Gaza and the "unconditional support" of Israel by the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany. He said Israel's extreme right-wing nationalist government does not represent the Jewish community or Israeli society. In May 2025 he signed a letter criticizing the film industry's "passivity." In June 2025 he told The View that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza. At the 77th Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Awards he wore a Palestinian keffiyeh and told E! that he denounced the genocide in Gaza, ending with a "Free Palestine" chant. He signed the Film Workers for Palestine boycott pledge, published in September 2025. In 2026 he joined other Spanish artists in a text urging the United Nations and world governments to work for the release of the Palestinian leader Marwan Barghouti.

  At the 98th Academy Awards, Bardem presented the award for Best International Feature Film alongside Priyanka Chopra. He said, "No to war, and Free Palestine," and the audience answered with a huge round of applause. He wore a badge reading "No a la guerra," Spanish for "No to war." He revealed that he had first worn the pin 23 years earlier, to protest the Iraq War. He also wore a pin of Handala, which he called "Palestine symbol of resistance."

  On the 24th of February 2022, the day Russia invaded Ukraine, Bardem staged a protest at the Russian embassy in Madrid. In an interview with Nancy Tartaglione of Deadline, he called Vladimir Putin an "imperialist" while also criticizing the enlargement of NATO. He voiced support for Ukraine again at the 2022 Independent Spirit Awards.

  In May 2011 Bardem teamed up with John Prendergast, co-founder of the Enough Project, to raise awareness about conflict minerals in eastern Congo. In July 2019 he signed a manifesto urging the PSOE and Podemos parties to reach an agreement after the April 2019 elections in Spain. In November 2019, at the March for Climate in Madrid, he called the city's mayor, José Luis Martínez-Almeida, and US president Donald Trump "stupid." He later apologized, saying that "the insult illegitimizes any speech and conversation."

  In January 2018 he became the Greenpeace ambassador for the protection of Antarctica.

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• 8. Private Life

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  In 2007 Bardem began dating Penélope Cruz, his co-star in Vicky Cristina Barcelona. The couple keep a low public profile and refuse to discuss their personal lives. They married in July 2010 in the Bahamas. Their son, Leo Encinas Cruz, was born on the 23rd of January 2011 in Los Angeles. Their daughter, Luna Encinas Cruz, was born on the 22nd of July 2013 in Madrid.

  At the Toronto Film Festival premiere of Everybody Knows in September 2018, Bardem spoke to Ikon London Magazine about acting with his wife. He said he finds it very easy. They play what they are supposed to play, then return to a daily life that is "way more interesting than any fiction."

  Spanish is Bardem's native language, and he is also fluent in English. He credits the band AC/DC with helping him learn to speak it, in some respects. He is a heavy metal fan and also likes Pearl Jam. He does not drive, and gets behind the wheel only for film roles. He calls himself a "worker" or an "entertainer" rather than an actor. Asked about American culture on James Rhodes' radio show En clave, he said he does not belong to it. As he put it, "here in Spain are my friends, here is my family, here are my roots, here is my language, here is my country." What worries him, he added, is the politics of his own country.

  Bardem is now an atheist, and he has voiced support for gay marriage in Spain. He has said that ego drives acting but should not interfere with filmmaking. On the supernatural, he does not believe strongly but does not deny it either. He called humans "just this little tiny spot in the whole universe" and said science and belief "should go together."

  A fight in a nightclub in his early twenties left him with a broken nose. It also left him, by his own account, with a hatred of violence. That is a curious fit for an actor who has played so many villains.

  In 2025 he told the show Conan O'Brien Must Go that he supports the Spanish football club Atlético Madrid. In 2024 he said he still saw himself as "the son of Pilar," and that he did not want "to be anything else."

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