Javier Bardem is a famous Spanish actor who is the first and only Spanish actor to win an Academy Award as Best Supporting Actor.
Let’s find out more about the actor!
- His full name is Javier Ángel Encinas Bardem
- The Spanish actor was born on 1st of March 1969.
- He’s known for his roles in blockbusters and foreign films.
- He won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance as the psychopathic assassin Anton Chigurh in the Coen Brothers’ modern western drama film No Country for Old Men (2007).
- He received critical acclaim for his roles in films such as Jamón jamón (1992), Boca a boca (1995), Carne trémula (1997), Los lunes al sol (2002), and Mar adentro (2004).
- Javier Bardem starred in Woody Allen’s romantic drama Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008), Sam Mendes’s James Bond spy film Skyfall (2012), Terrence Malick’s drama To the Wonder (2013), Darren Aronofsky’s psychological horror film mother! (2017), Asghar Farhadi’s mystery drama Everybody Knows (2018) and Denis Villeneuve’s science fiction drama Dune (2021).
- Javier Bardem has been nominated for three additional Academy Awards.
- Julian Schnabel’s Before Night Falls (2000), Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Biutiful (2010), and Aaron Sorkin’s Being the Ricardos (2021).
- Javier Bardem is the first Spanish actor to be nominated for an Academy Award (Best Actor for Before Night Falls in 2001).
- He’s also until today the first and only Spanish actor to win one (Best Supporting Actor for No Country for Old Men in 2008.
- He has received various other accolades, including two Screen Actors Guild Awards, a British Academy Film Award, a Golden Globe Award, five Goya Awards, two European Film Awards, two Volpi Cups for Best Actor at Venice Film Festival and a Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actor.
- Javier Bardem has been married to actress Penélope Cruz since 2010.
- In January 2018, Bardem became ambassador of Greenpeace for the protection of Antarctica.
- Younger brother of Carlos Bardem and Mónica Bardem.
- Son of Pilar Bardem. Nephew of Juan Antonio Bardem.
- Grandson of Rafael Bardem and Matilde Muñoz Sampedro. Grand nephew of Guadalupe Muñoz Sampedro and Mercedes Muñoz Sampedro. Second nephew of Luchy Soto and Carmen Lozano. Cousin of Miguel Bardem. Political grand nephew of Manuel Soto. Political second nephew of Luis Peña.
- Says in interviews that he does not know how to drive.
- Played rugby union as a teen and was on the Spanish National Team.
- Several years ago, a stranger in a disco asked him his name. When Javier replied, the man punched him in the face for no apparent reason, breaking his nose.
- Javier’s original interest was in painting, and he studied at Madrid’s Escuela de Artes y Oficios. Eventually, deciding he’d never be a talented painter, he drifted into a number of odd jobs, working as a bouncer, a writer, a construction worker, and even a stripper.
- To portray Reynaldo Arenas, Javier not only learned Cuban-Spanish, but Cuban-accented English, and lost 30 pounds to better resemble the smaller-framed Arenas.
- Javier, his mother, Pilar Bardem, and his siblings, Mónica Bardem and Carlos Bardem, often appear in each other’s films.
- To become Ramón Sampedro, a 55-year-old Spanish man who made headlines with a crusade to end his own life, Javier, who was in his thirties at the time, was on the set of The Sea Inside (2004) at the crack of dawn for a five-hour makeup session that produced the necessary aging.
- Member of the jury at the Cannes Film Festival in 2005.
- Actors Gael García Bernal and Diego Luna list him as their favorite actor.
- Beat out Johnny Depp for the role of Florentino Ariza in Love in the Time of Cholera (2007).
- Chosen by Empire magazine as one of the 100 Sexiest Stars in film history (#73) (2007).
- Dedicated the Oscar he won for No Country for Old Men (2007) to his mother, Pilar, whom he brought with him to the ceremony. At the end of his acceptance speech, Javier said to her (originally in Spanish), “Mom, this is for you, this is for your grandparents, for your parents, Rafael and Matilde, this is for the actors of Spain, who have brought, like you, the dignity and the pride to our job. This is for Spain and this is for all of you.”.
- The Bardem family owns a restaurant in Madrid, Spain called “La Bardemcilla”. The restaurant is managed by Javier’s sister, Mónica Bardem.
- Good friends with Josh Brolin and Tom Cruise.
- Had a long relationship with Cristina Payés. They were together for ten years.
- Has been in a relationship with Penélope Cruz since they began working together on Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008).
- Was originally cast as Guido Contini in Nine (2009), which he turned down and Daniel Day-Lewis was eventually given the role.
- Was originally cast in Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010), but dropped out of the project and was replaced by Josh Brolin.
- Vacationed with Penélope Cruz and his family (mother, Pilar Bardem and brother, Carlos Bardem) in Fernando de Noronha, a cluster of islands located directly off the Brazilian coast. [January 2010]
- Married long-term partner Penélope Cruz at a friend’s house in the Bahamas in a small ceremony with just family members present.
- Met Penélope Cruz for the first time on the set of Jamón, Jamón (1992), but they would not become a couple until working together in Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008). They also worked together on Live Flesh (1997), but did not share any on-screen time.
- Brother-in-law of Mónica Cruz and Eduardo Cruz.
- Became a father for the first time at age 41 when his wife Penélope Cruz gave birth to their son Leonardo Encinas Cruz on January 22, 2011.
- Teamed up with the Enough Project’s co-founder, John Prendergast, to raise awareness about conflict minerals in the Congo (2011).
- He was awarded a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6834 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood, California on November 8, 2012.
- Is one of only four Academy-Award winning actors to play a primary James Bond villain. The others are Christopher Walken in A View to a Kill (1985), Christoph Waltz in Spectre (2015), and Rami Malek in No Time to Die (2021).
- The longest he has gone without an Oscar nomination is seven years, between Before Night Falls (2000) and No Country for Old Men (2007).
- Became a father for the second time at age 44 when his wife Penélope Cruz gave birth to their daughter Luna Encinas Cruz on July 22, 2013.
- Is one of six performers with multiple Oscar nominations for foreign language films; the others are Marcello Mastroianni for Divorce Italian Style (1961), A Special Day (1977) and Dark Eyes (1987) (Italian), Sophia Loren for Two Women (1960) and Marriage Italian Style (1964) (Italian), Liv Ullmann for The Emigrants (1971) and Face to Face (1976) (Swedish), Isabelle Adjani for The Story of Adele H (1975) and Camille Claudel (1988) (French), and Marion Cotillard for La Vie En Rose (2007) and Two Days, One Night (2014) (French). Bardem was nominated for his performances in Before Night Falls (2000) and Biutiful (2010) (Spanish).
- He has worked with seven directors who have won a Best Director Oscar: Milos Forman, Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, Woody Allen, Alejandro G. Iñárritu and Sam Mendes.
- He has said that he doesn’t watch his own films.
- Bears such a strong resemblance to fellow actor Jeffrey Dean Morgan, they are sometimes confused for one another.
- He was born at 9:30 PM (GMT).
- His Oscar nomination for Being the Ricardos (2021) coincided with wife Penélope Cruz’s nomination for Parallel Mothers (2021), a first for the couple. Neither took home the statuette.
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