With birth name Javier Angel Encinas Bardem, he is the first Spanish actor to be nominated for the Oscar (Best Actor) following a distinguished career in the domestic Spanish film industry.
Coming from an entertainment-industry family, his venture into acting was no surprise; however, with each leading role, Bardem’s acting skill just emerged to earn international recognition.
Born in March 1st, 1969, in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain, Javier Bardem’s mother, father and grandfather were filmmakers and actors. He made his acting debut with the film El Picaro (The Scoundrel) at the mere age of six.
Although he appeared in some television series after his first release, Bardem preferred to move to pursue his artistic interest by learning painting at Madrid’s Escuela de Artes y Officios, and even played rugby for the Spanish National Team, before coming back to acting.
Staring alongside Penélope Cruz in the film “Jamon Jamon” (1992), he earned the popularity with the Spanish Actors Union Newcomer Award and a nomination for Goya Award for Best Actor. This opened Bardem’s way to work with some of the finest filmmakers in Spanish cinema and between 1993 and 1999; he appeared in over a dozen of films to garner a number of prestigious awards.
However, Javier Bardem got the major breakthrough with the release of 2000’s “Before Night Falls” as Cuban poet Reinaldo Arenas. For such an intense role he received as many as five Best Actor awards and a Best Actor Oscar nomination.
Bardem then acted as detective Agustin Rejas in “The Dancer Upstairs” (2002), the directorial debut of John Malkovich, followed by Spanish film “Los Lunes al Sol” (Monday’s in the Sun) in the same year. The film won five Goya Awards, including the Best Lead Actor that went to Bardem.
In 2004 he won Best Actor at the Venice Film Festival for his role in 2004’s “Mar Adentro” (The Sea Inside). Based on a real life story of Ramón Sampedro and his fight to obtain the right to end his life, the plot was yet again another powerful drama, and Bardem delivered his best.
His other major releases came in 2007 with “No Country for Old Men” (directed by Joel and Ethan Coen). This film was honoured with numerous awards, including four Academy Awards. Javier Bardem was awarded the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. With this, he also became the first Spanish actor to win an Oscar award.
Among others, he acted in the ‘Love in the Time of Cholera’ (2007), Extasis, ‘Killing Pablo’ and the Woody Allen directed romantic comedy-drama film Vicky Cristina Barcelona in 2008. In 2010 Javier Bardem was awarded Best Actor at the Cannes Film Festival for his role in Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu directed “Biutiful”.
The actor in early July 2010 married his long-time friend and Oscar-winning Spanish film star Penelope Cruz. Although they were good friends since their first film together in “Jamon Jamon” in 1992, they reunited in the sets of the Woody Allen film ‘Vicky Cristina Barcelona,’ for which Cruz received an Oscar award (Best Supporting Actress).
