Javier Bardem - Interview

Interview, Jan-April, 2001 by Dennis Hopper

A CREATIVE SPIRIT LIGHTS UP BEFORE NIGHT FALLS

Javier Bardem achieved critical and international success in 1992 with Jose Juan Bigas Luna's Jamon Jamon, but his name has remained relatively unknown internationally. This month, with the much-anticipated release of Julian Schnabel's Before Night Falls, the fantastically talented thirty-one-year-old actor plays one of the most fascinating roles in any American film in years. It's an assignment he's prepared himself for: Bardem is the star of more than twenty foreign films, including Pedro Almodovar's High Heels (1991) and Live Flesh (1997)--as well as Jamon Jamon, which featured another then up-and-coming Spanish actor, Penelope Cruz [Interview, December 2000]. He also comes from a cinematic family whose members include celebrated actors and directors. But Before Night Falls is more than a hot film with a hot new star: its story addresses some of the most politically charged issues of our day. Artist and film director Julian Schnabel (who is interviewed on page 67 of this issue) has chosen for his second fe ature the autobiography of Reinaldo Arenas (1943-90), poet, novelist, intellectual, and homosexual, who was antagonized and imprisoned for being all these things in Fidel Castro's Cuba. Arenas was only one in that enormous wave of Cubans that reached America in the Mariel boatlift in 1980. Arenas' fight against AIDS, his struggle to keep creating, and his eventual suicide remain complex, painful tragedies (political, social, cultural) embodying many issues between (and, in some cases, shared by) America and Cuba. Before Night Falls has already triumphed at several film festivals, especially at Venice, where it received several awards, including the Grand Jury Prize, a special Lifetime Achievement Award for composer Carter Burwell--and a Best Actor award for Javier Bardem. Dennis Hopper, long aware of Bardem's work and talent, recently sat down to talk with him.

DENNIS HOPPER: Hello Javier. How are you?

JAVIER BARDEM: Fine. How are you?

DH: Great. Listen, I want to tell you that I think you've given the best performance of the year and perhaps many years in your latest film, Before Night Falls.

JB: Thank you very much.

DH: What's really amazing to me was that in 1992, when I was president of the jury [at Venice) and we gave you guys the Silver Lion for Jamon Jamon, you were playing this really macho man. And then you go to this, to playing Reinaldo Arenas, the great Cuban writer who suffered under Castro's anti-gay policies. When I saw the movie I came out feeling as though I experienced something with Reinaldo, like I knew him, and that's really rare.

JB: All these nice things from you--what do you want me to say? [laughs]

DH: Well, what I'd like to talk to you about is how you found that in you.

JB: When you play a character that really exists or existed, the thing that concerns you is respect--for the people who loved this person and are still alive. In the very beginning I had these nightmares about the people who knew Reinaldo shouting at me, telling me how bad I was in the role. When you have a part like this one, where you play a character from the age of seventeen to forty-five, it's very easy to sort of say, "Hey guys, look how great an actor I am." You basically have two options--to get into the role, or to make a big show of your technique.

DH: [laughs] You're right.

JB: I tried to avoid that. The only thing I was trying to be was Reinaldo. I read his books, watched the tapes that exist of him talking, and tried to understand him. But you know what, when Julian [Schnabel, the director of the film] called me about the part I didn't know who Reinaldo was. At first he asked me to play the role that Olivier Martinez played [Lazaro, Arenas's best friend], and I said, OK, my English isn't very good, so I can play that smallish role." But two weeks later he called me at four o'clock in morning--as usual, because he thinks I'm always awake--saying, "Javi, Javi, are you there?" He said, "I want to ask you something, will you play Reinaldo?" I said, "No." He said, "OK." But he kept trying, and I kept refusing, for many reasons--because of the English, because Reinaldo was Cuban and I'm Spanish. I mean, English was difficult for me, but Cuban was much more difficult.

DH: But in the end you managed to have a Cuban accent, man. And to do that in English! That can be such an obstacle.

JB: The accent is something that you really have to grasp in order to get in the mood of the action.

DH: So how did you decide to do it?

JB: I asked Julian for a few weeks to come to a decision and I went to Cuba to try to understand who Reinaldo was. I went with my girlfriend, Christina, because we were going to have a holiday there while I was reaching for Reinaldo, and we were staying in the National Hotel [where most tourists stay]. And then on the second day I said, "Look Christina, I cannot stay in this hotel while I'm talking to people who knew Reinaldo and trying to reach who he was. I have to go to the streets, I have to find where this guy was living." So I left the hotel and went to the houses of the people who knew him, but everybody was really scared to talk about Reinaldo. That made it really difficult for me to try to make them relax and to ask personal questions.