As Javier Bardem prepared to present this year’s Oscars, a well-known incident remained vivid in his memory. “Vanessa Redgrave, back in the ’70s,” he recalls recently. When the British actress won a supporting actress Oscar for “Julia” in 1978, she referred to critics of her producing a documentary about Palestine as “Zionist hoodlums.”
Watching the clip now, the scattered boos from the crowd are striking. Later in the ceremony, the screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky, there as a presenter, condemned Redgrave from the stage.
Bardem was prepared for a similar approach, and he didn’t mind. “I was ready,” he says, miming a lusty sort of disapproval, “for the ‘Boo!’”
Presenting the award for international feature alongside Priyanka Chopra Jonas, though, Bardem got the precise opposite reaction.
“No to war, and free Palestine,” Bardem declared. The crowd erupted.
The previous September, the Spanish actor had worn a keffiyeh at the Emmys, where he was nominated for his supporting role in “Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story.”
On the red carpet before the ceremony, he said that he “cannot work with someone who justifies or supports the genocide” in Gaza.
Bardem’s outspokenly activist language is potentially risky in the context of an industry where, for instance, Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison — who may soon control Warner Bros. too — has condemned boycotts of Israel.
In Trump’s second term, most of Hollywood has been silent at best or actively contorting itself to please the president at worst. Which means that Bardem has stood out all the more — making activism a cornerstone of his persona.
He has, unlike Redgrave, emerged largely unscathed. What motivates him to speak out? “It’s funny,” he says, “because the question would be, how come I wouldn’t?”
He gestures to the tape recorders I’ve set up between us in a hotel suite in Madrid, the city where he lives with his wife, Penélope Cruz, and their two children.
“I’ve always felt that I have microphones and recorders recording my voice, and I have the right to denounce what I think is wrong.”
Bardem, while also criticizing Israel’s yearslong response to October 7, refers to the attacks of that day as “a horrible crime committed by Hamas — there’s not enough papers and TVs to say it.”
Still, there seems to be no small measure of career peril for Bardem, who’s been riding a hot streak lately.
Nearly 20 years after his Oscar win for playing the practically satanic villain of 2007’s “No Country for Old Men,” Bardem is at home in both blockbusters and auteur work.
After the Cannes Film Festival this month, where he’ll be promoting Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s intimate family drama “The Beloved,” and will appear in Apple TV’s limited-series reimagining of “Cape Fear,” taking on the psychopath role previously played by Robert Mitchum and Robert De Niro.
The end of the year brings “Dune: Part Three,” in which he’ll reprise his role as tribal leader Stilgar, a key ally to Timothée Chalamet’s conflicted Paul Atreides.
He’s also filmed “Bunker,” a drama that reunites him on-screen with Cruz.
All of that might seem in danger of evaporating — for instance, Bardem’s fellow Oscar winner Susan Sarandon said she was fired by her agent for being vocal about Israel’s actions in Gaza.
“That tells you how wrong this whole system is,” Bardem says. “She was one of the first ones to go there. And then she got that professional punishment.” Has Bardem received any at all? “Yes, I’ve heard things: They were going to call you about that project, but that’s gone. Or, this brand was going to ask you to do the campaign, but they cannot. It’s fine. I live in Spain. American studios are not the only place.”
What’s more, Bardem feels as much support as he does tension. “Some people will put you on a blacklist. I cannot tell you if that’s true or not — I don’t have the facts. What I do have the facts about are the new people that are calling you because they want you in their project. That makes me feel that the narrative that they’ve been using for so long is changing.”
After all, he says, he expected to be booed at the Academy Awards. Instead, “the reaction in the theater was an ovation.”
Bardem is home only for a short time — he’s leaving his family to head to London to star in “Hello & Paris,” a romantic comedy in which he plays opposite Kate Hudson, and he’s already changed out of the tuxedo he wore for the cover shoot into a graphic tee with a picture of a skydiver and black sneakers. But the Madrid setting is appropriate — we’re meeting to discuss a Spanish film.
Riding high after last year’s “Sirāt” won a Cannes prize and was nominated for multiple Oscars, Spain has three movies in competition at this year’s fest.
In “The Beloved” (called “El Ser Querido” in Spanish), Bardem plays famed director Esteban Martínez.
The auteur casts his daughter, played by Victoria Luengo, with whom he has a complicated relationship, in his new film.
Those who might see echoes of “Sentimental Value” — which won Cannes’ second prize last year before winning the international feature Oscar Bardem presented — wouldn’t be wrong, but “The Beloved” may be more unsparing in its evaluation of both father’s and daughter’s flaws. It’s further testament to its star’s ability and desire to probe the limits of experience.
“He’s a moving human being,” his friend and past co-star Julia Roberts says. “The things that he finds funny are incredibly funny, and the things that he’s serious about, he’s incredibly serious about.”
On-screen, as well, Bardem has a remarkable gift for going big — part of why his monstrous performance in “No Country for Old Men” is so terrifying is Bardem’s commitment to Anton Chigurh’s intensity and menace.
In the years since, he’s been a painter (“Vicky Cristina Barcelona”), a bleached-blond, Bond villain (“Skyfall”), and even the thundering King Triton (Disney’s remake of “The Little Mermaid”).
Bardem gets to stretch again in the forthcoming “Cape Fear” series (due on Apple TV June 5); his version of Max Cady, the freed convict determined to make his former lawyer’s life a living hell, shares a name and a facility for violence with De Niro’s version from Martin Scorsese’s modern classic, but little else.
The projects, too, share only a rough plot outline and a pushed-to-11 sense of drama. “If it was a pure remake, I would have never dared,” Bardem says. “But the essence of the craziness, of the nightmare, of the fever dream of ‘Cape Fear,’ is there.”
Bardem knows how to give a fever dream. Roberts, who insisted on casting Bardem as her happily-ever-after in 2010’s “Eat Pray Love” even after “No Country for Old Men” made him the ultimate baddie, remarks, “I adore him and admire him so deeply. He’s also terrifying! This new show he has coming out — I will not be watching this. I barely made it through the trailer!”.
But in “The Beloved,” returning to the kind of low-key character drama that first got him noticed in movies like “Before Night Falls” and “The Sea Inside,” Bardem now plays nothing less and nothing more than a flawed human. In a bit of good news for those who love the actor, the script (written by Sorogoyen and Isabel Peña) gives him plenty of room to vamp.
In one scene, for instance, Bardem’s character, who insists on everyone else’s professionalism, has an utterly unprofessional breakdown while filming under the baking sun. “That takes us directly to the toxic masculinity of his generation and his age — which is my age, which is my culture, which is Spain,” Bardem says.
Born in 1969 under the authoritarian reign of Francisco Franco, Bardem says that he absorbed certain lessons about what it is to be a man. “We were educated in a culture that was giving us all we wanted, and we took for granted that we are way more powerful and more in control — we are the driving force, as men. That is absolutely wrong in every sense.” Bardem notes with pride that the only characters in “The Beloved” who stand up to Esteban are women.
Bardem’s swaggering auteur might not be out of place in the so-called manosphere, the culture of chauvinism that’s pushing a generation of boys into misogyny.
“I have a 15-year-old boy and a 12-year-old girl, so I’m very sensitive in every aspect,” Bardem says. “One of the things I’m very afraid of is that we’re going backwards.” He cites the American president, thousands of miles from where we sit: “Trump, prosecuted for abuse of women, and he’s still in the White House and nothing has happened — that gives you a blank check to do whatever you want.”
Bardem tends to apologize for his English, which he hardly needs to do. And back when he won his Oscar, he delivered the most emotional section of his acceptance speech in Spanish. “Mama,” he said addressing her as she watched from the audience, “this is for you,” thanking his grandparents as well and adding, “This is for the Spanish performers who, like you, have brought dignity and pride to our profession.”
His mother, Pilar Bardem, was an actress — she won a Goya (the Spanish equivalent of an Oscar) in 1996. And Bardem credits her with shaking him of whatever other cultural messaging he might have received. “My parents separated when I was 3,” Bardem says. (Divorce was not then legal, and Pilar Bardem’s choice of career further alienated her from her peers. “Being an actress in the ’60s and ’70s — in Spain, that would have been less than being a prostitute,” he says.)
Bardem learned early on about the weaknesses underlying men’s machismo. “My father was an absence — he did what he could, and what he was able to do obviously was not enough, but I forgive him.” Bardem claims his father abused his mother and dominated the family space when around: “He was very imposing, and he suffered a lot for that, because at the end of the day, he was alone.” Javier took Pilar, who died in 2021, as his role model: “My mother fought very hard to find her own place and to find her dignity — and I worship her. I worship her sacrifice, and her love and her strength.”
The 1997 Pedro Almodóvar film “Live Flesh” is notable in one regard: It brought together Javier Bardem, Pilar Bardem, and Penélope Cruz. (At the start of the film, Cruz’s character gives birth on a Madrid bus; Pilar Bardem, in a bit of casting kismet, assists her.) This wasn’t the first or the last time the future married couple appeared on-screen together; they met when Bardem was 21 and Cruz was 16 in the romance “Jamón Jamón” (which translates to “Ham Ham”) and reunited in 2008’s “Vicky Cristina Barcelona,” playing tempestuous artists in love.
Their real lives are somewhat more sedate. “At home, we don’t talk much about work,” Bardem says. “We don’t have posters or photos or anything that reminds us of what we do for a living.” (They did hold on to their his-and-hers Oscars — Cruz won the prize for “Vicky Cristina Barcelona” — but keep them out of sight.) “We don’t waste too much time talking about work, though we love what we do. We try to compartmentalize life and fiction.”
Roberts, who’s been their guest in Madrid, declares, “It just feels good when you’re around them and see them as a family. Paella on Sunday — don’t miss it!”
All this normalcy presents an unusual challenge when — as they just did — Cruz and Bardem act together. “Bunker,” written and directed by Oscar winner Florian Zeller of “The Father,” is, Bardem says, “a marriage story.” The pair sat and discussed the script — they both liked it and were inclined to do it, and in the midst of raising a teenager and a preteen, the idea of catching up at work had its appeal too.
“It’s a beautiful story that is going to help us see again,” Bardem says. “Because sometimes you are immersed in your daily shit and the kids and the house, and it’s like — when do you sit down and look at each other again? When do you start to breathe again, and take the other person in?” Working together forced some reflection. “OK, now we are obliged to sit down, look at ourselves, listen to each other, and be in emotional contact for many hours.”
Not that that’s a hardship. Bardem and Cruz tend to keep their relationship private and usually don’t appear at one another’s premieres. (The 2022 Oscars, at which Bardem was nominated for “Being the Ricardos” and Cruz for “Parallel Mothers,” represented a rare public date night.) But reflecting on the work he just did with Cruz has made Bardem somewhat expansive. “She’s a woman I’m so blessed by having had the chance to be at the same time, in the same place, in life,” he says. “It’s important that you respect and support your partner, but also that you admire that person for what she is, for what she does. Penélope is an amazing, beautiful, good human being — the way she relates to her family, to her friends, to our kids, to me, to herself. It’s been a lot of years, and I haven’t seen a hint of malice in her.” Bardem is, somehow, only just getting started. “On top of that, she’s amazingly fucking beautiful!” he says. “When I see her being photographed on some magazines, I go, Is that my wife? Jesus, is it? It must be!”
It’s striking that Bardem, for all his contentment in family life, has never been more in demand as an actor: He is due back on the “Hello & Paris” set shortly, after a period of filming that’s taken him to locations such as Budapest (“Dune”), Atlanta (“Cape Fear”) and the United Kingdom (“F1”). “I don’t have musts in my contract that have to do with bigger trailers or luxurious suites,” he says. “The only thing I do pay attention to is, no more than two weeks away from my family.” Since his older child was born, one or the other parent has remained at home continuously — and on “Bunker,” which shot in Madrid, both were home for dinner. “You feel like you’re doing a normal job, for once. You wake up, you go to work and you come back at night.”
Talking to Bardem is not unlike talking to another parent at school dropoff in Brooklyn; his concerns, beyond what film to make next, are similar to my own. Bardem’s 15-year-old “got his first phone less than a year ago. No social media, of course,” he says. “They work with computers at school, which we are OK with and not OK with.” What Bardem and Cruz hope for, the actor says, is that their children learn to sit with themselves, and they’ve tried to teach them to meditate. “We try to make them understand the importance of being bored, of wasting your time, of sitting down and looking at the ceiling.” This refusal to be distracted is where creativity originates. “The younger generation has less patience, less attention, less care in detail,” he says. “We are all living on a fast pace, and it takes a lot of courage to take the time to sit down and enjoy something for what it is, without thinking you are missing something else. It’s what we are consuming on a daily basis through our phones — and this attention deficit we are all having.”
The failure to pay attention, Bardem says, is why the theatrical experience is so important. “You’re going to see images and hear sounds made by others, and your vision is going to be manipulated. You need to be focused, and you need to let yourself go.”
Fans of “Dune,” the decade’s most subversive and intriguing big-screen franchise, will get that experience at the end of the year. Notably, IMAX, the defining premium exhibition format, chose to commit its theaters to “Dune: Part Three” over Marvel’s “Avengers: Doomsday.” (The two films, likely to be among the year’s biggest, are both due out Dec. 18.)
When he was in the mix to be cast in one of the many male roles in “Dune,” Bardem privately hoped for Stilgar, a leader whose utter belief in Paul’s potential gives the younger man the loyalty of the Fremen. “As much as Aragorn in ‘Lord of the Rings’ — they’re those characters that when you read, you feel like, ‘Wow.’”
“I wanted an actor who would fully immerse himself in Fremen culture and bring it to life,” says “Dune” director Denis Villeneuve by email. “I needed someone who wouldn’t judge this character, and would instead embrace Stilgar’s worldview.”
Bardem brings a direct, unjudgmental approach — and a dollop of wit — to Stilgar’s total devotion to his cause. But is Stilgar’s stated belief that Paul is the Lisan al-Gaib, the prophet the Fremen have been awaiting, accurate? “Whether he is or is not,” Bardem says, “is not relevant. I want to believe he is, and I want my people to believe he is, because we need him.”
“Dune: Part Two,” released in 2024, ended with Paul launching a “holy war” on his enemies, urged on by Stilgar. (“Stilgar is a true tragic figure,” writes Villeneuve. “As human beings, we all need a way to make peace with our human condition. Some choose religion to achieve this. Stilgar is one of them.”) And Stilgar’s advocacy for Paul, Bardem says, “takes you to a very extreme situation. But that’s what we’re dealing with today. Religious reasoning for bombing countries. Religion is a very dangerous weapon of manipulation and fear, and a tool to excuse the most horrible violence. And you see that in Stilgar — because, in the third one, you’re now seeing the consequence of that.”
“Dune” is, for Bardem, a powerful political statement; it also represents years of his working life, spent alongside Chalamet, the most promising — and polarizing — young actor working today. “It was 2019 when we started shooting ‘Dune 1,’” he says. “It’s been six years, a very important six years in his growing — physically, emotionally, professionally. It has been very, very powerful on his trajectory. He has grown up as an actor and as a person during these three films.” Bardem compares Chalamet to Paul Atreides, who begins in a place of naive curiosity. “He was like, ‘Hey! I’m here! What’s all this about?’ But he’s always been very generous, very intelligent, and always observing. That kid, you could see how much he loves this work, how much he was trying to breathe in everything. He was always observing.”
Bardem bursts into a hearty laugh — perhaps recalling the rollicking Oscar season through which Chalamet just barnstormed. “And now we have to observe him!”
Bardem is also among the biggest names in a Cannes competition lineup that seems — especially in comparison with recent years, when everyone from Jennifer Lawrence to Demi Moore to Selena Gomez has appeared on the Croisette — heavier on emerging-auteur promise than on star power. But he also comes as an actor with a long, rich history with the festival.
In 2005, for instance, Bardem was a Cannes juror under the Serbian filmmaker Emir Kusturica; his fellow jurors included Salma Hayek, John Woo, and Toni Morrison. “We were having fun, and at the same time we were like soldiers,” he says. “We were watching every movie together. It’s a tough job — an average of two to three films per day.” Bardem compares his jury service to acting, in that both jobs require the practitioner to be “a vessel”: “It’s like, ‘I have a responsibility. A lot of people’s work and dreams have been put into this. Pay attention. Don’t have any prejudice. Be fair with your own taste, and don’t be guided by anything else.’”
That was more than 20 years ago, when Bardem was an actor only beginning to make himself known beyond Spanish-language cinema. (His jury gave best actor to Tommy Lee Jones, with whom Bardem would appear in “No Country for Old Men,” another Cannes title, two years later.)
“I’ve been in many realities of Cannes,” he says. “I’ve been a juror. I’ve been recognized with this amazing award, a recognition that, for me, is one of the most important in the world.” (He won best actor in 2010 for Alejandro González Iñárritu’s heartbreaking character drama “Biutiful.”) “At the same time, I’ve been with movies that were killed and got stones thrown at.” (In 2016, Cannes audiences booed “The Last Face,” a Sean Penn-directed drama about humanitarians in Liberia and South Sudan in which Bardem starred alongside Charlize Theron.)
Through good times at the festival and ill, though, Bardem has one consistent through-line: the moment when he’s greeted by the festival’s director, Thierry Frémaux: “I always remember the nice, warm, loving hug of Thierry at the top of those red stairs — knowing the impossible pressure that he has on his shoulders.”
Even a man raised in the culture of machismo can admit it feels heartening to receive a bit of encouragement. “He welcomes you warmly and heartily, because he loves cinema so much that he’s happy you have the opportunity as a filmmaker to see your movie on that screen,” Bardem says, beaming. “That’s what I’m looking for.”
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