JAVIER BARDEM

Russian ‘GQ’ holds Javier Bardem up as “the last European macho”

Rodrigo Fernández, Moscow (El País English Edition)

The first issue this year of the Russian  edition of GQ magazine features Spanish actor Javier Bardem on the cover, with an interview by the journalist Stas Tyrkin inside. The headline leaves little to the imagination: “Europe’s last macho.”

In the interview, a lot of attention is paid to the fact that Bardem — described as “the model of the Latin Lover, who by the early 1990s was already seen as Spain’s top stud and sex symbol” — was prepared to accept the role of a homosexual in the film Antes que anochezca (Before Night Falls), directed in 2000 by Julian Schnabel.

 By way of explanation the actor tells how, while on the film’s promotional campaign in the US, he was often asked whether he had hesitated before accepting a gay role. “Though I’m big and strong, and therefore very different from the personality, who was skinny and weak, I often said I would have found it more disturbing if they had offered me a role where I kill a few hundred Vietnamese. You can only conclude that we are less afraid of violence than of sex in our culture.”

Schnabel’s film brought Bardem his first Oscar nomination. Though he didn’t win, he admits that in those years “things began to happen very fast,” and that his life “seemed to be running out of control.” Not winning the prize was, in a way, good luck for him. “Everything turned out for the best,” he says. “Thank God! Winning an Oscar would have been too much. If they had have given me one, I would have lost my head.”

Of course, says Tyrkin, later he did win one, becoming the first Spanish actor to do so. The second was Penélope Cruz, who is now his wife, and is about to give birth to the couple’s first child.

As for ongoing work, Bardem tells of a shoot he recently completed with Terrence Malick, whom he calls a “master” and a “humanist.” As for film criticism, the actor confesses that, unfortunately, he chooses to read each and every article written about him. Fortunately, the interviewer then quotes John Malkovich, who called Bardem “the best young actor in the world.”

While all these things are well known to the Spanish reader, the magazine does a first-rate job of presenting Bardem to the Russians. It’s surely no coincidence that 2011 is the Year of Spain in Russia, an event that will be celebrated with an extensive program of cultural activities.