Javier's Career
Bardem starred in his second major motion picture, The Ages of Lulu, when he was 20. In 1992, he made his first international hit with Jamón, jamón, which also starred Penélope Cruz.
After starring in roughly two dozen films in his native country, he would eventually land his international breakthrough performance role in Julian Schnabel's Before Night Falls in 2000, as Cuban poet Reinaldo Arenas. He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for the role, the first time for a Spaniard. This also marked Bardem's first English language speaking role. In 2002 he starred in John Malkovich's directorial debut, The Dancer Upstairs.
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 , who unsuccessfully brought his case to the Spanish courts, yet eventually succeeded in persuading several friends to assist him and committed suicide. That year he also made a brief appearance as a vicious crime lord who summons Tom Cruise's hitman to do the dirty work of dispatching witnesses, in Michael Mann's crime drama Collateral, which also starred Jamie Foxx.
In 2007, Bardem acted in two film adaptations; the Coen Brothers' No Country for Old Men, based upon the novel of the same name; and the adaptation of the classic Colombian novel Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez. In No Country for Old Men, he plays chilling sociopath killer Anton Chigurh. For that role, he became the first Spanish actor to win an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. Javier's life's work was honored at the 2007 Gotham Awards, produced by IFP (Independent Feature Project).
In 2008 he starred in Woody Allen's film Vicky Cristina Barcelona.
Biutiful (2010) is in post-production and Javier is currently filming Eat, Pray, Love (2010) with Julia Roberts in Brazil.
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Javier Bardem Biography