Javier Bardem on macho Latin males and avoiding the director’s chair
- A quarter of a century after playing roles ‘sending up’ chauvinistic Spanish men, the Spanish actor says their behaviour has not changed much
- He is not tempted with becoming a director, but would happily work for a streaming platform like Amazon or Netflix – if the project was right
He is Spain’s best-known actor, but Javier Bardem says he has trouble getting work there.
“I work much less in Spain than I would like to,” the Oscar-winning star said as the Nantes Spanish Film Festival in western France staged a retrospective of his work.
“I don’t get the scripts because people think I live abroad, or that I would be looking for stratospheric money, which is not true. If a film has a budget of course I want to be paid, but if not, we can find another way.”
The actor, who tends to alternate between Hollywood blockbusters like the Pirates of the Caribbean and edgier independent European and American films, says he is “prepared to be flexible”.
Bardem, who lives with his wife Penélope Cruz and their two children in a suburb of Madrid, has always been deeply engaged in his homeland.