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Javier Bardem’s His Own Worst Critic: Javier Bardem’s character’s so creepy in No Country for Old Men you’d absolutely never want to encounter this guy in real life. But while audiences should be terrified by this guy, Bardem was more frightened over the fact his performance might not have been perfect. “I terrify myself because I thought I was wrong, but not because I was scary,” explained Bardem. “I don’t know any actor or actress that really likes to see themselves. So, I’m like that. I prefer not to see it.”
Even when a director pays him a compliment, Bardem’s leery of believing it. “No, I don’t believe them (laughing). You know when you’ve done something good because your instinct tells you that was right. But a lot of time you see that take and you go, ‘Wow, that was bad.’ And the other one you thought was horrible, it works. I don’t understand anything.”
Bardem prefers not to watch his own movies during their theatrical run. “I can watch myself on screen as long as it’s been a long time after I did the movie. Like, now I can see The Sea Inside four years after. Now I cannot see this because it’s too recent for me to know quite what I tried to achieve and most of the time I didn’t. It’s not being humble, it’s true.”
He loves the way No Country for Old Men turned out but that’s not because of his performance. “I’m not in it all the time,” laughed Bardem about why he’s able to enjoy the film. “But I can now watch the The Sea Inside. Because you are there all the time, you go, ‘Omigod, omigod, here comes my nose and my funny, stupid eyes. Look at that big face, come on!’ I mean I have my ego, but it’s weird to see yourself on screen, man. Your eyes are like this big….but you want to be on screen at the same time, because you want to perform.”
