Javier Bardem Quotes Page 2

“In 22 years of acting, I've only done two movies where I, personally, kill people. The Coens called me the Spanish Ballerina on the No Country For Old Men set, because every time I had the gun, when they called cut, I'd give it back and say, 'Take this sh*t out of my hands!' There were laughing, like they couldn't believe I was supposed to be the villain.”

“Many people out there don't have a choice in choosing their friends and the people they're being manipulated by. Thank God, I have that choice. I can use my judgment and choose.”

“My first part was in a film where I played a sad*mas*chist who killed people and created fun orgies. I'm a method actor. I went to every orgy in the world.”

“People have been born in refugee camps and they are getting tired of that.”

“Really, I don't see this heart-throb thing at all.”

“Some quality performances and movies have a chance to be rewarded, but it's not like it's a bible.”

“Sometimes I say to myself, what are you doing in this absurd job? Why don't you go to Africa and help people? But I cannot help people, because I am a hypochondriac.”

“The award is important in order to bring people to the movie theater. That's the only principle meaning of any award.”

“The background – your own history – is way more important than what you can achieve as a professional.”

“The bad news is that only the bad people reach the news because they are noisier.”

“The fact that I like to make characters doesn't mean that I like to watch my characters being made – my performance.”

“The good thing about being an actor, and the gift of being an actor, is that you are beautifully forced to see the world with different eyes.”

“The middle and working classes are paying the debt that the financial markets created.”

“The only thing I can do is act, but it's not something I even feel comfortable doing. It costs me a lot, because I'm a shy person, even if I don't look it.”

“The personal thing is something I have never talked about. And I never will. That is prohibited. My job is public. But that's it. When you're not working, you don't have an obligation to be public.”

“The whole Oscar thing, that is just surreal: you spend months and months doing promotion, and then come back to reality with this golden thing in your hands. You put it in the office and then you just have to look at it sitting on the shelf. And, after about two weeks, you go: What is that doing there?”

“There are so many movies, so many festivals, and so many awards going on, each judged with each other, like your work is worse than others and that's not fair. How can you tell what's best and what's worst from these awards? We're talking about art.”

“There is no good side to celebrity.”

“There is no middle ground in Hollywood; you're a failure or you're a success. That mentality is wild.”

“This great imperialistic world called the United States has made us believe that an Oscar is the most important thing in the world for an actor. But if you think about it for five minutes you realise it can't be.”

“We actors always say how difficult and physically demanding a role was. But give me a break, it's only a movie.”

“We live in a world of denial, and we don't know what the truth is anymore.”

“What does my performance have to do with Russell Crowe's? Nothing. If I play Gladiator and we all play Gladiator with Ridley Scott in the same amount of time, maybe we have a chance to see who did it best.”

“When I see myself at 14 years old I can put my hands on my head and think: 'How could I have done that?' but at that time it had sense for me. You do the same when you're 20. And now, when you look at people who are 20 years old you ask yourself: 'Was I like that? Was I really like that?'”

“When I was born, there was a very isolated idea of what it meant to be a man or a woman, and you belonged to one gender or the other.”

“When you are portraying somebody that has a very specific emotional weight, you feel like you're really starting to abandon your own body and go to someplace else.”

“When you know people are really at peace with who they are and what they do, they collaborate and want to help you to improve.”

“When you put gas in your car you are making a political statement, because you are supporting the empires that control and continue the destruction of some countries.”

“You don't need a man, you need a champion.”

“You want to do your job well so that people in the future say, 'OK, he's not bad, let's hire him.'”