Javier Bardem

His mother, Pilar Bardem (1939–2021), was an actress, and his father, José Carlos Encinas Doussinague (1931–1995), was the son of a cattle rancher.

According to Pilar's memoirs, José had a "capricious and violent will," and shot up the front door.

He changed jobs more than 10 times, leading to evictions and the children going hungry.

The two separated shortly after Javier's birth.

His mother raised him and his elder siblings, Carlos and Mónica, alone (another sibling died shortly after birth), both of whom have also pursued an acting career.

Javier Ángel Encinas Bardem (born 1 March 1969) is a Spanish actor.

Bardem was born on 1 March 1969 in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, in the Canary Islands, Spain.

In 1989, for the Spanish comedy show El Día Por Delante (The Day Ahead), he had to wear a Superman costume for a comedic sketch, a job that made him question whether he wanted to be an actor at all.

Bardem also worked as a stripper (for one day) during his struggling acting career.

Bardem came to notice in a small role in his first major motion picture, The Ages of Lulu, when he was 21, in which he appeared along with his mother, Pilar Bardem.

He also appeared in minor roles in Amo tu cama rica and High Heels.

A son of actress Pilar Bardem, he first became known for such Spanish films as Jamón jamón (1992), Boca a boca (1995), Carne trémula (1997), Los lunes al sol (2002), and Mar adentro (2004).

Bigas Luna, the director of Lulu, was sufficiently impressed to give him the leading male role in his next film, Jamón Jamón in 1992, in which Bardem played a would-be underwear model and bullfighter.

The film, which also starred his eventual wife Penélope Cruz, was a major international success.

Bardem featured in Sancho Gracia's Huidos, and starred in Bigas Luna's next film Golden Balls (1993).

Bardem's talent did not go unnoticed in the English-speaking world.

His father died of leukemia in 1995.

Bardem comes from a long line of filmmakers and actors dating back to the earliest days of Spanish cinema.

He is a grandson of actors Rafael Bardem and Matilde Muñoz Sampedro (sister of actresses Mercedes and Guadalupe), and a nephew of screenwriter and director Juan Antonio Bardem.

On the latter's side, he is a cousin of filmmaker Miguel Bardem.

He comes from a political background, as his uncle Juan Antonio was imprisoned by Franco for his anti-fascist films.

Bardem was brought up in the Roman Catholic faith by his grandmother.

As a child, he spent time at theatres and on film sets.

At age six, he made his first film appearance, in Fernando Fernán Gómez's El Pícaro (The Scoundrel).

He also played rugby for the junior Spanish National Team.

Though he grew up in a family full of actors, Bardem did not see himself going into the family business, and painting was his preferred medium.

He went on to study painting for four years at Madrid's Escuela de Artes y oficios.

In need of money, he took acting jobs to support his painting but felt he was a bad painter and eventually abandoned it as a career.

In 1997, John Malkovich was the first to approach him, then a 27-year-old, for a role in English, but the Spanish actor turned down the offer because his English was still poor.

His first English-speaking role came that same year, in with director Álex de la Iglesia's Perdita Durango, playing a santería-practicing bank robber.

Bardem has been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for playing Reinaldo Arenas in Before Night Falls (2000), a criminal with cancer in Biutiful (2010), and Desi Arnaz in Being the Ricardos (2021).

After starring in about two dozen films in his native country, he gained international recognition in Julian Schnabel's Before Night Falls in 2000, portraying Cuban poet Reinaldo Arenas.

He received praise from his idol Al Pacino; the message Pacino left on Bardem's answering machine was something he considers one of the most beautiful gifts he has ever received.

For that role, he received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor, the first for a Spaniard.

Immediately after, he turned down the role of Danny Witwer in Minority Report which eventually went to Colin Farrell.

Instead, in 2002, Bardem starred in Malkovich's directorial debut, The Dancer Upstairs.

He won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance as assassin Anton Chigurh in the Coen Brothers' western drama film No Country for Old Men (2007).

He has since starred in Woody Allen's romantic drama Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008), Sam Mendes's James Bond spy film Skyfall (2012), Terrence Malick's drama To the Wonder (2013), Darren Aronofsky's horror film mother! (2017), Asghar Farhadi's mystery drama Everybody Knows (2018), Denis Villeneuve's science fiction films Dune (2021) and Dune: Part Two (2024), and Disney's live-action remake The Little Mermaid (2023).

Bardem has been married to actress Penélope Cruz since 2010.

In January 2018, Bardem became the ambassador of Greenpeace for the protection of Antarctica.