Background

Javier Angel Encinas Bardem was born on 1 March 1969 in the city of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria in Canary Islands of Spain, to Jose Carlos Encinas Doussinague and Pilar Bardem. His father was a businessman while his mother is an actress.

His parents separated shortly after his birth, so he was raised by his single mother. Since she worked as an actress, Javier spent most of his childhood on film sets and theaters.

Bardem grew up among those associated with films due to his family’s association with the Spanish film industry for many generations and in spite of having an interest in acting, he wanted to become a painter. He was only six years old when he appeared in his first film. The film was titled El Picaro.

Though he grew up in a family full of actors, Bardem did not see himself going into the family business.

Javier told The Guardian about his childhood in Spain, “It was a very troubled time, to the point that to have the surname Bardem in those times was not good; you were pursued and put in jail. I was too little, but I saw things. People being arrested, my mother crying because colleagues of hers and the people she loved were imprisoned or disappeared. The streets were violent… My mother is an actress; my grandfather and grandmother were actors. The parents of my grandparents were actors, in a time when actors were not allowed to be buried on sacred land. Terrible. My uncle is an actor, my brother is an actor and a writer, my sister used to be an actress. My cousins are actors. I’ve seen since I was born all that you can imagine in an actor’s life. So I don’t buy anything. I don’t buy success. I don’t buy failure. I only buy commitment.”

Education

Bardem studied at the Escuela de Artes y Oficios in order to get trained as a painter. In fact, he did start off as a painter but did not find the sort of success that he aspired for and when he struggled with his finances he took up stray acting jobs. In 1989, he appeared on the TV show The Day Ahead on Spanish television and decided to give up on painting as a career.

Before he took up acting seriously like brother Carlos and sister Monica, he trained as an artist. A talented sportsman, he also became a member of the Spanish national rugby team. It was not rugby, which he played from the age of nine until 24, which resulted in his Roman profile, however his nose was broken in a nightclub attack by a stranger who asked for his name and then punched him.

He took odd jobs to pay for art college - including one day working as a stripper and a stint as an extra on film sets. Javier was 20 fate when intervened in the form of a speaking part offer from director Bigas Luna for the film Las Edades De Lulu (The Ages Of Lulu). Encouraged by his mother he went on to enroll in acting school.

Career

The 1992 flick Jamon, Jamon, Javier Bardem which he starred alongside a 17-year-old Penelope Cruz, was the handsome youngster's first international hit. While in his native Spain he quickly built a reputation, based on a couple of dozen films made with acclaimed directors such as Pedro Almodovar and Milos Foreman.

Javier's first English-speaking part was in 2000 movie Before Night Falls, portraying the persecuted gay Cuban poet Reinaldo Arenas. The role made him an overnight sensation in Hollywood, and he became the first Spanish actor to be nominated for an Oscar. In 2002 John Malkovich cast him in his directorial debut The Dancer Upstairs and described him at the time as "the best young actor in Europe, maybe anywhere". "He has the strength and power of a bull but with a very masculine fragility underneath," said Malkovich. "His talent is off the radar."

Javier cemented his credentials with 2005's Mar Adentro (The Sea Inside), playing a quadriplegic man who challenged the Spanish legal system for the right to die. The movie won the Academy Award for best foreign film, sparked a debate about euthanasia in Spain, and earned him the best actor gong at the Venice Film Festival.

Despite his physically imposing 6ft 3in frame, Javier has a reputation as a gentle giant. His dislike for violence led him to think twice about accepting the role of a psychopathic killer in the bloody Western No Country For Old Men (2007) alongside Tommy Lee Jones. Having accepted the part he stole the film as chilling killer Anton Chigurh and in 2008 was named the best supporting actor at the 80th Academy Awards, making history as the first Spanish actor to take home one of the coveted trophies.

Two weeks after wrapping filming on the film, the versatile star began lensing Mike Newell's adaptation of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's novel Love In The Time Of Cholera, playing the polar opposite to Chigurgh as Columbian lover Florentino Ariza. He also signed up for the lead in Woody Allen's 2008 flick Vicky Cristina Barcelona, in which he teamed up again with Penelope Cruz - whom he began dating at the end of 2007.

Despite his success in Hollywood, for now, Javier has no plans to leave his Madrid hometown, where he owns a pair of restaurants. His work, however, is likely to keep him in Tinseltown for many years to come. Neither the silver screen nor his legions of fans can get enough of him it seems. As director Joel Coen said when asked why he chose the actor for No Country For Old Men, "Javier is somebody you can't take your eyes off".

Achievements

• 

  Bardem has been awarded an Academy Award, a Golden Globe, a Screen Actors Guild Award, a British Academy of Film and Television Arts, 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, lost to Russell Crowe for Gladiator) as well as the first to win (Supporting Actor, 2007, for No Country for Old Men) in an acting category not on the Foreign Language Film category.

Works

More photos

• movie

  • Dance with the Devil

    (Perdita Durango, released as Dance with the Devil in the ...)

    1997
  • Love Can Seriously Damage Your Health

    (El amor perjudica seriamente la salud (Love Can Seriously...)

    1997
  • Automata

    (In a future where Earth's ecosystem verges on collapse an...)

    2014
  • Live Flesh

    (Critically acclaimed writer/director Pedro Almodóvar ( Ti...)

    1997
  • Before Night Falls

    (Academy Award-winner Javier Bardem stars as the Cuban poe...)

    2000
  • Dias Contados

    (Días contados (English title: Running Out of Time; litera...)

    1994
  • The Last Face

    (Oscar winners Charlize Theron and Javier Bardem are two i...)

    2017
  • The Ages of Lulu

    (The Ages of Lulu (Spanish: Las edades de Lulú) is a 1990 ...)

    1990
  • Second Skin

    (Second Skin (original Spanish title: Segunda piel) is a 1...)

    1999
  • The Gunman

    (In this action-packed thriller from the director of "Take...)

    2015
  • Vicky Cristina Barcelona

    (Two girlfriends on a summer holiday in Spain become enamo...)

    2008
  • Don't Tempt Me

    (Don't Tempt Me (Spanish: Bendito Infierno, also known as ...)

    2001
  • Mondays In the Sun

    (In this award-winning Spanish film, a group of stevedores...)

    2003
  • Love In The Time Of Cholera

    (Based on Nobel Prize-winning author Gabriel García Márque...)

    2007
  • Loving Pablo

    (Javier Bardem and Penélope Cruz star in the true story of...)

    2017
  • Eat Pray Love

    (Liz Gilbert (Julia Roberts) is a modern woman on a quest ...)

    2010
  • The Counselor

    (Michael Fassbender, Brad Pitt, Cameron Diaz, Javier Barde...)

    2014
  • Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales

    (Captain Jack Sparrow is pursued by old rival Captain Sala...)

    2017
  • Collateral

    (Collateral is a 2004 American neo-noir action thriller fi...)

    2004
  • Mother!

    (When a poet and his young wife open their doors to a pair...)

    2017
  • El Amante bilingüe

    (The Bilingual Lover (Spanish: El Amante Bilingüe) is a 19...)

    1993
  • The Sea Inside

    (Based on the true story of Spaniard Ramón Sampedro (Javie...)

    2004
  • Alacrán Enamorado

    (Unexpectedly, a young fighter, active member of a radical...)

    2014
  • No Country For Old Men

    (A man takes $2 million cash from the scene of a desert sh...)

    2007
  • To The Wonder

    (From director Terrence Malick (Days of Heaven, The Thin R...)

    2012
  • The Dancer Upstairs

    (A South American police detective hunts for a serial terr...)

    2003
  • Everybody Knows

    (Laura (Penélope Cruz) returns home to Spain to attend a w...)

    2018
  • Los Lobos de Washington

    (Two friends pretend to cheat their former boss with a slo...)

    1999
  • Huevos de Oro

    (A construction worker uses his charm and bravado in an at...)

    1993
  • High Heels

    (In this high-spirited sex comedy, a famous actress is reu...)

    1991
  • The Road Not Taken

    (Yong (Wang Xuebing) operates a dilapidated ostrich farm i...)

    2019
  • Biutiful

    (Uxbal (Bardem) is a dedicated father of two small childre...)

    2010
  • Goya's Ghosts

    (Painter Francisco Goya faces a scandal involving his muse...)

    2007
  • Skyfall

    (Bond's loyalty to M is tested as her past comes back to h...)

    2012
  • Éxtasis

    (Éxtasis is a 1996 Spanish drama film directed by Mariano ...)

    1996
  • El Detective y La Muerte

    (An aged and powerful magnate is dying. He offers Laura, h...)

    1994

• ьщмшу

  • Jamon Jamon

    (Jamon Jamon is a 1992 Spanish romantic comedy-drama film ...)

    1992

Religion

Bardem was brought up in the Roman Catholic faith by his grandmother.

Bardem was raised Catholic, but it never had much of a hold on him. He said, "Little by little, I started to make some questions about it. I realized I respect people’s beliefs but I started to really freak out about the manipulation of people’s beliefs in order to gather fear... we have different [beliefs] but in the end, it’s the same, no?"

Now he’s an atheist, claiming: “I don’t believe in God; I believe in Al Pacino.” He said it was after his father’s death that it “suddenly all felt so obvious” that religion is just a way of coping with death, to explain our own mortality.

"I don’t understand religion when it gets to the point where the beyond commands the present, because then the present doesn’t have any sense... Myself, I really need to know and face mortality: I am this, I am me, I am now."

Politics

Bardem comes from a leftist political background: his mother was an actress and activist and his uncle, a director, was imprisoned by long-time Spanish dictator Francisco Franco for making anti-fascist films. He said his involvement in politics runs in his blood:

"It’s not something that you do because you have to, it’s something that you do because you don’t know to do something else."

And hailing from a country that was one of the hardest hit by the Great Recession, he’s got plenty to talk about. As a supporter of Spain’s socialist party, he has railed against the conservative People’s Party for making cuts to social programs in the name of debt reduction, and for bailing out banks instead of helping people pay their mortgages. About Spain’s economic state, he said in 2012: "The government raised taxes on paper and pencils. That’s fucking crazy. The middle and working classes are paying the debt that the financial markets created. A quarter of Spaniards are unemployed. One in ten families are completely out of work: It’s fucking dark, it’s brutal."

Outside of the partisan political debate of his own country, he’s also focused on global issues. Bardem is particularly passionate about the plight of the Sahrawis in Western Sahara, who are living both in refugee camps in Algeria and under a brutal Moroccan-controlled police state in their homeland. He produced a documentary called “Sons of the Clouds” and addressed the United Nations General Assembly in 2011 about the issue.

Responding to a question of why he chooses to put his reputation on the line by being so politically active, Bardem said,

"That is in my nature. That is in the blood of my family. That is in me. I am who I am, and I have the same right to say whatever the hell I think is right or wrong as you have or the guy downstairs has, as everybody has."

During the 2014 Israel - Gaza conflict, Bardem and Cruz denounced Israel's actions openly as a genocide through an open letter that was criticized by several Hollywood personalities.

Views

Javier Bardem supports the LGBT movement. He once said, that if he were gay, he would get married "right away tomorrow, just to screw the Church" (mañana mismo, sólo para joder a la Iglesia).

He also supports different charities on environmental and social topics. He donated funds to Artists for Peace and Justice to help build schools in Haiti following the earthquake that ravaged the country in 2010. In 2011, Bardem teamed up with The Enough Project to raise awareness about conflict minerals in eastern Congo.

Quotations: "We are so scared about talking about death that we are letting people die in silence. It is good to talk publicly."

"It would be amazing to think your film or your performance had the power to make changes, but it's enough that it makes people talk and think. Maybe they shouldn't do anything anyway. The Church has strong feelings and we respect that."

"I'm getting more comfortable now, but it will never get to the point as if you are doing it in your own language. When I say, "I love you" or "I hate you" in Spanish, many things come to my mind, aspects of my own life. When I say it in English, I don't have the memories."

"All of the good movies are based on how that story was told. And you cannot do it with a bad script, that's for sure, no matter who."

"The only thing I can do is act, but it's not something I even feel comfortable doing. It costs me a lot, because I'm a shy person, even if I don't look at it."

"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. But that's not something that obsesses me in a real way. And second, I truly believe that what I would like to portray on-screen or on stage are human beings, and human beings usually are not as handsome as movie stars. But most times being handsome on-screen or being handsome 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."

"If I ever get a phone call saying "Would you like to work with Pacino?" I would go crazy."

Membership

Javier Bardem is a supporter and a member of different charity organizations as Artists for Peace and Justice, ENOUGH Project, Greenpeace and others.

• 

  Artists for Peace and Justice , Haiti

• 

  The Enough Project is a Washington, D.C. based non-profit organization that was founded in 2007. Its stated mission is to end genocide and crimes against humanity.

  ENOUGH Project , United States

• 

  Greenpeace is a non-governmental environmental organization with offices in over 55 countries and an international coordinating body in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Greenpeace was founded in 1971 by Irving Stowe and Dorothy Stowe, Canadian and US ex-pat environmental activists.

  Greenpeace

Personality

Bardem's favorite films are The Godfather II (1974), The Deer Hunter (1978), One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975), Welcome Mr. Marshall (Bienvenido Mister Marshall) (1953), E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982).

Bardem was wayward while growing up and would get into fights and drink heavily in his young days. However, after getting in a bad fight that left his friends with broken bones, he decided that it was time to mend his ways.

He became the first Spanish actor to be nominated for the Academy Award for his performance in the movie Before Night Falls.

While growing up, he had little interest in becoming an actor as he was focused on making a career as a painter. In fact, he initially took acting jobs to support himself as a painter.

Once at a disco, a stranger came up to him and asked his name. On hearing his reply, he punched Bardem in the face, leaving him with a broken nose. He never got to know why he was punched.

To prepare for the role of Cuban poet Reinaldo Arenas in Before Night Falls, he learned Cuban Spanish, as well as Cuban, accented English. He also went on to lose 30 pounds to resemble Arenas.

To look like Ramón Sampedro, a 55-year-old Spanish man in the 2004 movie The Sea Inside, he used to arrive early on the sets for the five-hour-long tedious process to bring on an aged look.

While growing up, he had a keen interest in rugby and even went on to play for the junior Spanish National Team.

He had to overcome competition from Johnny Depp to bag the role of Florentino Ariza in Love in the Time of Cholera.

In 2007, Empire magazine placed him at the #73 spot on the list featuring 100 Sexiest Stars in film history.

His family owns a restaurant called La Bardemcilla in Spain. The restaurant is managed by his sister Monica Bardem.

After Christopher Walken and Christoph Waltz, he is the third Oscar-winning actor to have played the leading negative role in a James Bond movie.

He questioned his desire to become an actor, in 1989, after he was made to wear a Superman costume for a comedic sketch on the Spanish comedy show El Día Por Delante (The Day Ahead).

He has confessed in his interviews that during his early struggling days as an actor, he had worked as a stripper. However, he had to do that job for only a single day.

In 2011, he joined forces with John Prendergast, the co-founder of The Enough Project to draw attention to the conflict minerals in Eastern Congo.

In 2005, a former model slapped a lawsuit against Bardem, in which she accused him of having broken her nose while dancing recklessly in a New York City nightclub.

Physical Characteristics: Build: Average

Height: 5 ft 11¼ in or 181 cm

Weight: 87 kg or 192 lbs

Hair Color: Dark Brown

Eye Color: Dark Brown

Quotes from others about the person

• "Javier is somebody you can't take your eyes off." - director Joel Coen.

Interests

• cinema, painting

• Politicians

  John Prendergast

• Sport & Clubs

  rugby

• Music & Bands

  heavy metal, AC/DC, Cannibal Corpse

Connections

Javier Bardem got married to Penelope Cruz in the year 2010 after having dated for three years in a secret ceremony in the Bahamas, with just a handful of friends and family present. Two months later they announced that they were expecting their first child together, due in early 2011.

Father:

José Carlos Encinas Doussinague

Mother:

Pilar Bardem

María del Pilar Bardem Muñoz. His mother raised him alone.

colleague:

Salma Hayek

Brother:

Carlos Bardem

Sister:

Monica Bardem

Grandfather:

Rafael Bardem

grandmother:

Matilde Muñoz Sampedro

Wife:

Penélope Cruz

Javier first met his current wife Penelope Cruz while working in the Spanish comedy-drama movie, Jamón Jamón, which was released in 1992 and had them playing lovers. However, as she was underage at the time, nothing happened between them. They were later cast in the Woody Allen film Vicky Cristina Barcelona. Nothing happened between them during the shooting as they were too shy and too professional. But on the last day of the shoot, a mutual friend of theirs threw a wrap-up party and he got drunk enough to make the first move. After beginning their relationship, they opted to keep their affair low key and even to this day, they rarely talk about their personal lives. They got married in The Bahamas in July 2010. The following year, she gave birth to their son in Los Angeles and they welcomed a baby girl into their family in 2013.

Son:

Leo Encinas Bardem

Penélope Cruz gave birth to their son Leo Encinas Bardem at the Cedars Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles, California (22 January 2011).

Uncle:

Juan Antonio Bardem

colleague:

Jennifer Lawrence

colleague:

Scarlett Johansson

colleague:

James Franco

colleague:

Idris Elba

colleague:

Woody Harrelson

colleague:

Judi Dench

colleague:

Brad Pitt

colleague:

Elle Fanning

References

• Javier Bardem - Twitter
• Javier Bardem - Instagram photos and videos