The Limited Times

Now you can see non-English news...

Javier Bardem: "Masculinity must have half of femininity inside"

2022-05-27T22:12:45.598Z


The actor stars in one of the meetings at the Cannes festival and talks about his career, his concerns about the future and his first big kiss with Penélope Cruz


He has understood it as a chat between friends, and he was right in the tone.

This Friday afternoon, Javier Bardem (Las Palmas, 53 years old), a four-time Oscar nominee, once winner of the Hollywood statuette and who at Cannes won the award for best actor with

Biutiful

in 2010, sat in front of a room overflowing with students and moviegoers who wanted to review his career with him and be able to ask him questions.

Bardem, who will shoot

Dune Part II this summer,

has doubled the usual time for these meetings and for almost two hours he first chatted with a French journalist and then answered all kinds of questions, even confessing, for example, his first big kiss with Penelope Cruz.

More information

Tom Cruise, the prophet of cinema in theaters: "I will never release on platforms"

Tom Cruise was the first of the guests in this edition to the meetings, which have been closed with Bardem.

If the protagonist of

Top Gun: Maverick

failed to communicate more than his love for theaters and learning on set, the Spaniard —the first to participate in this format and the second Hispanic after Alfonso Cuarón in 2017— quickly connected with the audience in English with jokes and anecdotes.

Bardem declared at the beginning his commitment to the Cannes festival and the honor of being in the event that most supports cinema ... even if it happened for him

It is not a country for old men

and did not take an award, as the presenter recalled.

From that film, for which he received the Oscar, the actor recalled: “Since almost my beginnings I have studied and prepared my roles with Juan Carlos Corazza.

We investigated his landscape and his motivations.

With

No Country for Old

Men we think that Anton Chigurh is not that he was violent, but that he was violence.

I shot alone, without connection with the rest of the actors, killing people every day [laughs].

When I saw it assembled, I enjoyed it”.

Another of his successes at Cannes was

Biutiful.

“It was Alejandro González Iñárritu's first film with a single main character, and we jumped into it,” he recalled.

“But that trip lasted six months, and for me it was exhausting.

By the way, I saw it recently and it's still amazing, amazing.

Iñárritu is one of the greatest creators I have ever worked with”.

Bardem, during the meeting. LOIC VENANCE (AFP)

Regarding the beginnings of his career, he commented on the casual nature of his first on-screen job: “My physique accompanies me, I can't do anything to hide it.

I went with my sister to a test for a character for

The Ages of Lulu,

without any other intention, and there they asked me to take off my shirt.

I did and they gave me the role [laughs].

I started as a piece of meat and little by little I have been adding brains [laughs]”.

Of those years and of that cinema he pointed out: “Not only was I younger, it is that the way of making cinema was very different.

They were very different times.

You prepared your papers in a more private, secret and calm way.

Today everything is going at a different speed, at a speed that is not good for some things...”.

The omnipresent Pilar Bardem

From there he went on to remember his mother, Pilar Bardem, who died almost a year ago.

“The legacy is very important to me.

I saw my mother acting, my uncle [Juan Antonio Bardem] directing, and that's how I learned that I had to earn it, that nobody gives anything away.

The same has to do with my political activism.

He came from home.

And I feel comfortable with having my own opinion, with defending it and more so in these times when everything is a sensitive matter.”

When asked what has been the most difficult moment in his career, he confessed: “I lost my mother almost a year ago.

I spent a terrible August and September 2021, remembering the love and gratitude received from her part.

And then I went to Atlanta to shoot

Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile

[based on a children's book], where I had to sing and show my happiness.

It was hard, and I remembered that talking to my mother about that film, she told me that she had to do it not only for my children, but for all the children, for the joy.

I acted as if I was full of music and happiness and when they cut off I would sink again.

A little schizophrenic.

In the end, her love for what I was making of her grew out of my love for her.

My mother is still present in my life every day, and after this shoot I know that lessons can be learned from everything”.

03:16

Javier Bardem, five films that earned him an award

In several of his answers, Bardem clarified what he thinks of his work and how he feels about acting.

For example, he noted: “I love that part of my job where I build psychology.

I like to draw and I make portraits of faces, because what interests me is delving into the human being and finding and constructing what makes each role unique.

The only good thing about the pandemic was wearing a mask and being able to spy on people while covered... Although, of course, you only see half of their faces.”

Of the connection with the audience, he explained: "As an actor you fight to entertain, to catch the public, but at the same time you reflect on whether the film makes people grow, if it opens debates, if it makes its viewers better inside" .

After an anecdote about Al Pacino —his god of him— and his comments to Penelope Cruz's pregnant belly, he concluded:

“Our work does not change lives, but it may at times mean something to someone.

You have to fight for those moments of emotional connection.”

“On the last day of 'Vicky Cristina Barcelona' we shot our kiss.

We kissed, and we went on, and on, and before we knew it, the team was gone."

He also opted to de-dramatize the interpretation.

He stopped being a method actor after an accident on the set of

Ecstasy,

from which the little finger of his right hand remains motionless.

“To all the young actors I would say that you have to be healthy to play the disease”, as a defense that the characters cannot devour the person, although in return he confirmed that he is still “a control freak in the filming”.

And he laughed: "There are times when you see yourself on a pirate ship with ghosts, corsairs, zombies or in the desert of Jordan with Villeneuve, Zendaya, Chalamet and costumed, and you think: 'It's a good day at the office" .

With another Pacino story he remarked that he will never direct.

"I don't have that desire, it's very difficult."

Penelope Cruz and her first big kiss

Penelope Cruz appeared in the conversation at various times.

“In

Loving Pablo,

she loved the creative process even though she hated my character.

And in

Everybody Knows,

I was the one who constantly worried about her state of mind because for four months she brought to life the three-day emotional journey of a mother whose daughter has been kidnapped.”

She said that during the filming of

Vicky Cristina Barcelona,

the men's team picked on him because he was the object of desire for Rebecca Hall, Scarlett Johansson and Penelope.

I joked with Rebecca and Scarlett, and was more distant with Penelope.

"Like when you like a girl at school and you don't even go near her."

Until the last day.

“That day we filmed our kiss.

We kissed, and we went on and on, and before we knew it, the team was gone."

Although on stage he said that this was the beginning of the relationship, after the act he was not so sure.

"What is certain is that this kiss is not in the film and that Woody sent us the sequence as a wedding present."

And from today's society, he pointed out his mixed feelings with the platforms ("Every director has the right to see his film on the big screen, and at the same time there are films that have only been made for them"), and their infinite menu ("I notice with my children that we need a lot of time to decide what to watch, and at the same time you have access to a lot of movies”).

Bardem is concerned about the current "loss of concentration, you have to read more books and look less at the mobile."

And he warned about social networks: “

Bullying terrifies me

In Internet.

I am older, but I understand that it must be very difficult to be oneself in a world, the current one, in which everything can be recorded.

Today you don't exist if you don't exist on social media, which is an incredible lie.

And of course hiring an interpreter for his followers on networks is a huge mistake.

Bardem attends to the photographers before his talk. Vianney Le Caer (AP)

Bardem was asked if he could define masculinity and thought long and hard before replying: “Masculinity must have half of femininity within it.

We have to fight for the combination instead of abandoning ourselves to confrontation.

I come from a patriarchal society, which we have to overcome.

But, without neglecting the fight for equality and fairness, we have to remember that what makes movies good is the talent of their creators, and not their gender, religion or ethnicity.

What has she learned these years?

"I'm a lucky man, I know.

I hope to move forward in peace with my people.

I have learned that there are other opinions and that you must live with them and accept them.

And at the same time I am aware of how vulnerable we are.

Violence does not solve anything, even though it lives inside us.

After almost two hours, and after asking the public to call him a teacher (“I need to record you telling me: Farhadi laughed at me because he was going to give a master class”), Bardem finished the talk and signed dozens of autographs.

As happy as the attendees.

Exclusive content for subscribers

read without limits

subscribe

I'm already a subscriber

Source: elparis

All life articles on 2022-05-27

You may like

Life/Entertain 2024-02-29T14:03:45.351Z

Trends 24h

Latest

© Communities 2019 - Privacy

The information on this site is from external sources that are not under our control.
The inclusion of any links does not necessarily imply a recommendation or endorse the views expressed within them.