Javier Bardem (born March 1, 1969) is a Spanish actor. Born in Las Palmas, Gran Canaria, Canary Islands, he is the latest in a long line of a family which has been making movies since the earliest days of Spanish movie making: son of Pilar Bardem, nephew of Juan Antonio Bardem... His film debut was at the age of 6, and he appeared in several television series before turning to painting and, eventually, athletics. He was a member of the Spanish national rugby team. In 1992 appeared in Jamón, Jamón, an international hit movie. But his role in that film as a sexy stud made him afraid that he would be typecast, and he deliberately decided to avoid such roles later. Eventually he would land his breakthrough performance role in Julian Schnabel's Before Night Falls in 2000, as homosexual Cuban poet Reinaldo Arenas. He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for the role, the first Spaniard to be so honored.
Bardem 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 2004, he won the Best Actor at the Venice Film Festival for his role in The Sea Inside, a film about the true-life suicide of Ramón Sampedro. Future roles include an appearance in Steven Soderbergh's upcoming biopic Che (2006), as well as a starring role as Colombian druglord Pablo Escobar in Joe Carnahan's Killing Pablo. He is also slated to appear in the Coen Brother's No Country for Old Men.
Internet rumors say that Bardem may be cast in a new biopic of international terrorist Carlos the Jackal.
The Dancer Upstairs (2002)
