User:Anen87/Javier Bardem/Temp

Early life
He played rugby for the underage Spanish National Team. He studied art at Madrid’s Escuela de Artes y Oficios but chose to pursue an acting career.

Early work, 1990–99
http://www.elmundo.es/magazine/m69/textos/bardem2.html At age 20, Bardem decided to pursue his family trade when he was approached by Bigas Luna to appear in an upcoming movie, The Ages of Lulu. Regardless of the film's mixed reviews, Bardem was superb as the charismatic, bisexual, pimp[sadomasochist ]. After a brief role in the TV miniseries Tango, El Baile De Poder, he scored a small part in High Heels, by Spain's most popular director, Pedro Almodovar, starring Almodovar favorites Antonio Banderas and Victoria Abril. It became the second highest-grossing film in Spanish history. Following this great success was another small contribution, this time to Amo Tu Cama Rica.

In 1992, he made his first international hit with dark comedy, Jamón, jamón playing a macho gigolo, which also starred Penélope Cruz. This was reunion with director Bigas Luna, but this time with Bardem in a lead role.

He was propelled to fame for his role as a potential underwear model and would-be bullfighter in the 1992 comedy Jamón, jamón.

The film garnered six Goya nominations, including nods for Bardem, becaming a cult hit around the world. The film's success catapulted Bardem into the limelight. Though, due to the fame it brought him, he had his nose broken by a complete stranger at a disco in Madrid, and was forced at the age of 24 to give up rugby, a game he'd loved since he was 9.

, but stopped playing the sport when he was 23.

His lack of English forced him to turn down a part in the original London production of Terry Johnson's Hysteria, where he would have played Salvador Dali in his famous 1938 meeting with Sigmund Freud. The role eventually went to Tim Potter and the play won an Olivier award as Best Comedy in 1994. In 1993 Bardem was in two more bit parts, The Bilingual Lover and then in Sancho Gracia's Huidos, a story of Republican resistance during the Spanish Civil War. Following these came Bardem's first major lead, in Golden Balls, this was his third collaboration with Bigas Luna. He received his second Goya nomination.

Bardem's most prominent performance of 1994 was in The Detective And Death, directed by Gonzalo Suarez loosely based on Hans Christian Andersen's The Story of a Mother. The film was nominated for five Goyas. This same year he starred in the nine Goyas-awarded film Dias Contados. He won the Silver Seashell as best actor at the San Sebastian Film Festival for his role in these two films. The year 1995 brought him yet more acclaim with the black comedy short La Madre, directed by Javier's cousin Miguel Bardem and starring his mom Pilar. Then there was Boca a boca, directed by Manuel Gomez Pereira and written by Joaquin Oristrell. Bardem plays an aspiring actor awaiting a part in an American movie but he's so crippled by shyness he must psych himself up to work by doing Travis Bickle impressions, it all goes down when he gets involved in a double cross and a romantic triangle. The movie garnered eight Goya nominations with Bardem being the only winner.

After Pedro Perez Jimenez's Mambru, Bardem's next starring role was in Mariano Barroso's Éxtasis, a robbery plot that becomes a psychological thriller marked by greed, seduction and betrayal. The same year, 1996, brought in two more high-profile releases. First was Not Love, Just Frenzy, co-written and co-directed by Miguel Bardem. The film featured his siblings Carlos and Monica, and, for the first time since Jamon, Jamon, Penelope Cruz. Javier stuck with Cruz for Love Can Seriously Damage Your Health, and for the second time with Manuel Gomez Pereira and writer Manuel Gomez Pereira. The movie featured Cruz briefly and Bardem for just a matter of seconds. 1997 would begin with Airbag, a riotous comedy featuring both mom Pilar and former co-star Maria De Medeiros.

Now established as one of Spain's top stars, Bardem worked again with Pedro Almodovar, collaborating on the 1997's Live Flesh. For Bardem this was a renunion with mom Pilar, Liberto Rabal, Francesca Neri, and Penelope Cruz (in a brief cameo at the start). Bardem was Goya-nominated for brilliantly playing a paralyzed wheelchair-basketball star. Bardem's final release of 1997 was Perdita Durango, playing a santeria-practicing bank robber. His next appearance was a cameo in Santiago Segura's black comedy, Torrente, el brazo tonto de la ley. The movie was accused of being abjectly crude and offensive but became the biggest box-office hit ever in Spain. In 1999 Bardem re-teamed for the third time with the Pereira-Oristrell partnership for Between Your Legs, a comedy drama of betrayal, blackmail and madness featuring former co-stars Victoria Abril and Carmelo Gomez. Following this was Washington Wolves, another collaboration with Éxtasis director Mariano Barroso and Live Flesh co-star Jose Sancho. Next was the film, Second Skin with his former co-stars Jordi Molla and Ariadna Gil.

Breakthrough, 2000–04
Bardem's talent did not go unnoticed in the English-speaking world, in 1997, John Malkovich was the first to have approached the 27 year old for a role in English in his directorial debut, The Dancer Upstairs. He was flattered that Malkovich had heard of him, but Bardem turned down the offer due to his English being very poor.

He gained international recognition for his portrayal of Cuban poet and novelist Reinaldo Arenas in the 2000 film Before Night Falls.

It was in 2000 that Bardem's first English-speaking film as well as international breakthrough was in, Before Night Falls by renowned artist and director, Julian Schnabel. Based on the memoirs of Reinaldo Arenas, a Cuban poet and novelist, persecuted for his homosexuality and liberalism by Castro's post-revolutionary government. Originally Schnabel had asked Bardem to play the minor role to which Bardem had said no (that role eventually went to Olivier Martinez). It was after, established Hollywood actor, Benicio Del Toro turned it down that Schnabel asked Bardem to play the lead. Asking Schnabel for a few weeks to decide Javier went to Cuba to get an idea of Arenas, seeking out people in the streets who knew the poet. He entered a period of intense preparation, physically, he lost any hint of muscle dropping 30 pounds and spent eight hours a day with an English teacher. For his performance Bardem won the Volpi Cup at Venice, was nominated for a Golden Globe and became the first Spaniard to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor.

Bardem's next release was a cameo in Spanish production Don't Tempt Me, featuring his former colleagues Penelope Cruz and Victoria Abril, as well as Gael Garcia Bernal.

Immediately after Before Night Falls he'd turned down the role of "Witwer" in Minority Report which eventually went to Colin Farrell.

Bardem's talent did not go unnoticed in the English-speaking world. In 1997, John Malkovich was first to approach the 27 year old for a role in English, but Bardem turned down the offer due to his English being very poor. In 2002 instead he starred in John Malkovich's directorial debut, The Dancer Upstairs. Malkovich (who first approached bardem in 1997) originally had him in mind for the role of the detective's assistant, but since the movie took so long to get financed it gave Bardem time to learn English and take on the lead role of the detective. "I will always be grateful to him because he really gave me my very first chance to work in English" Bardem said of Malkovich.

Malkovich described him 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." He has described him as possessing "the strength and power of a bull, like a young Gérard Depardieu, but with a very masculine fragility underneath".

2002 also brought another hit in Mondays in the Sun, Spain's biggest film of the year, even outdoing Almodovar's Talk to Her. It took take five Goyas, including one for Bardem. Following this was Variaciones, Javier Aguirre's visual accompaniment to a poem by Jorge Luis Borges. It showed Bardem and Ines Sastre running together and kissing, the scene would replay over and over.

His first major Hollywood picture, came 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. This same year 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.

World recognition, 2007-current
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. Chigurh was named #26 in Entertainment Weekly magazine's 2008 "50 Most Vile Villains in Movie History" list. John Malkovich said Bardem deserved it long ago and deserves all the awards he had been given, referring to him as "the best young actor in the world".



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

He received praise from actors such as, Dianna Agron, Ben Affleck, Receiving praise from actors that included Al Pacino who called his home in Madrid and left a message on his answerphone, explaining that he wanted to call straight after seeing the film to tell him how much he loved it. Sean Penn was reportedly left speechless, later calling Bardem's work "the best performance since Brando in Last Tango in Paris" and Julia Roberts' campaign effort on his behalf.

On January 25, 2011 Bardem was the unexpected Oscar nominee for his role in Biutiful, after being overlooked by the Globes and SAG, he became the first all Spanish-language Best Actor nominee ever.

He is the first Best Actor nominee in a completely Spanish-language role. "The honour is different this time as it's the first time that an actor has been nominated in the Best Actor category for a completely Spanish-language role!"

Around this same time he was offered the lead role of "Gunslinger" Roland Deschain in Ron Howard's adaptation of Stephen King’s Dark Tower novels. If he signs, he will also star in the TV series as well. Also EON Productions offered him to join Daniel Craig in the upcoming James Bond film, Bond 23 as the villain, but he has yet to decide which of the two offers he'll go with.

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. Bardem will appear in the untitled sixth feature by Terrence Malick, shot in fall 2010 in Bartlesville, Oklahoma.

But there's no telling which he'll go with, noting that in the past Bardem was offered the high-profile villain role in Oliver Stone's Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps but turned it down.

personal
Bardem has admitted in interviews he cannot drive, only getting behind the wheel for film roles.