Yes, we are very good friends. I mean we are truly good friends in Spain. I really admire his work. He's an amazing theatrical actor. He's always doing plays that are very complicated. We are pretty good friends but the relationship we have in normal life is very different from the one we have in the movie. In real life we are much more like buddies, like really close friends who like to hang out. We don't have the sense of respect that we have in the movie. You know what I meanm where he has to respect my position of detective, and I have to respect his position of assistant? In real life we don't respect each other at all (laughing).
What was your response when you heard John Malkovich put your name in his contract as an actor he had to have?
Honored and flattered, and also with a huge responsibility. For me to know that a person like him who could get any actor - because he's John Malkovich – and he wants me to work in his movie no matter what, at a moment when I wasn't known outside of Spain... Now I'm more known because of "Before Night Falls," but at that time when he first approached me nobody knew me outside of Spain. My English was even worse than now. It was a huge risk for him to take and also for me to be responsible for that. So what I did was to work really, really hard and to always be grateful to him. I will always be grateful to him because he really gave me my very first chance to work in English. He came to me in 1997 just to talk to me about the movie but because the movie took so much time to get financed, I did "Before Night Falls" in the meantime. But he was really the first person who came to me to give me a role in English.
What was the most surprising aspect of working on "The Dancer Upstairs?" Was there something you learned about yourself or your acting while making this film?
Basically it was difficult for me to portray a man who is trying to be in control of situations because I'm completely different from that. I'm much more of an impulsive person. That was difficult for me, but once I was working on that with the help and support of John Malkovich, I grew in the sense of being able to do something that is quite different, and quite different from myself. I grew and I learned that once you really focus your energy on one point and really go for that, if you are surrounded by good people and good material, you are able to do it.
The word 'passionate' is often used to describe your approach to acting. How do you describe yourself as an actor?
Well I just try to be honest in what I do, no matter what it is. If I'm an actor, I try to be honest as an actor. If I were a plumber, I'd try to be an honest plumber (laughing). Basically what I try to do is to understand the human being besides the character. Not only try to transform myself into that but to try to portray that human condition on screen or on stage. I believe the acting job is a way for people to watch themselves. It's some kind of a mirror where we can see the best and the worst of the human condition. That's my duty, to find that material and make it happen in front of an audience.
NEXT PAGE: Javier Bardem on Scripts, Independent Films, and "Mondays in the Sun"
