Admit it, you’ve probably fantasized about being holed up in a hotel room with hunky Spanish actor Javier Bardem. You just never pictured him dressed down in a pair of bright white crocs while munching on chocolate chip cookies, right?
“I guess the image that I have of myself doesn’t correspond with the image people see from the outside,” says Bardem, relaxing on a couch at the Regency Hotel on a particularly hot Friday afternoon. He leaves a trail of crumbs behind as he gets up to open the balcony door, letting in a hint of a breeze.
From the “outside,” we’ve seen the 38-year-old reinvent himself over and over again – defying categorization in an industry that thrives on pigeonholing actors. But then again, he’s repeatedly told interviewers that he chooses roles for the challenge, and not necessarily for money or fame.
He can’t help it if these elements organically come together, like when he played controversial Cuban writer Reinaldo Arenas in “Before Night Falls.”
Not only did Bardem gain international attention for his portrayal of a persecuted gay man living in Communist Cuba, but he also earned an Oscar nomination for Best Actor – the first for a Spaniard.
To think that he didn’t speak any English when he took the role.
“I worked so hard,” says Bardem as he lights up a cigarette. “I learned that if you believe, you may get to where you want to go,” he says, letting out a plume of smoke. “That [movie] showed me a side of myself that was asleep.”
This awakening quickly put him on every director’s wish list. “I saw ‘Before Night Falls’ and thought, ‘great actor, wonderful actor,’ ” says Milos Forman, who directed him in the upcoming “Goya’s Ghost,” a historical drama set during the Spanish Inquisition and told through the voice of painter Francisco Goya.
He plays Brother Lorenzo, a sinister monk who becomes infatuated with an accused heretic (Natalie Portman).
“I tried to see him as a human, as a victim of a totalitarian regime,” says Bardem, adding, “I don’t like priests, so when I was doing that role I felt very ‘ugh!’ ” He contorts his face as if smelling something putrid.
Halfway through the film, Lorenzo abandons his cassock to become a leader in Napolean’s armed forces.
“I share more with the character when I’m doing the revolutionary,” says The Canary Islands-born actor. “He’s more impulsive, more alive.”
He’s powerful to watch and even more powerful to hear. Bardem’s voice is melodious and mesmerizing. When he speaks Spanish, it’s like listening to a Federico Garcia Lorca poem.
His acting range is broad, too – from playing a sex addict in “Between your Legs,” to nailing the role of Santa, a blue collar shipyard worker who loses his job to globalization in “Mondays in the Sun.” That movie won five Goyas, Spain’s equivalent to Oscars.
“I feel sorry for him,” says Forman. “He doesn’t know how talented he really is – he’ll never know.”
Bardem, who is a third-generation thespian, has two other movies coming out this year and he’s working on a third.
“Amazing,” he says in disbelief. “Write down that he fell asleep at the thought of having to promote three movies,” he instructs me and falls sideways on the sofa.
Out this November is the Coen brothers flick “No Country for Old Men,” a thriller based on Cormac McCarthy’s novel.
“Working with the Coens is a dream come true,” Bardem says.
He commands the screen as Anton Chigurh, a diabolical killer that is already being called one of Hollywood’s most terrifying villains. Critics at Cannes praised his performance as Oscar-worthy.
In the fall, there’s also “Love in the Time of Cholera,” a film adaptation of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s novel, in which he plays Florentino Ariza, a hopeless romantic who waits 50 years for the woman he loves.
“He’s not a logical human being,” says Bardem, “but that’s the magic of Garcia Marquez.”
The movie was shot in Cartagena, Colombia, a city he found equally enchanting: “I want to go back there so bad,” he says drifting off, “The people, the smiles . . . ”
Plans for vacation will have to wait though. Woody Allen is directing him and Penelope Cruz in an untitled project that starts production next month in Barcelona. “I have to play a role that I haven’t played in a long, long time,” he says with a cunning smile. “The Man.”
Coincidentally, the last time he was “the sexy stud” was opposite Cruz in Pedro Almodóvar’s 1992 film “Jamón, Jamón.”
“I was 22 and now I’m 38 – things go down. So they kicked me out of those roles,” he says. “I have some dignity. I’m getting old.”
He’s not convincing anyone. He looks as good as ever.
When not working, Bardem says he enjoys all the regular things, including dancing. Just don’t try to get him to salsa or merengue.
(In 2004, while celebrating the opening of the film, “The Sea Inside,” Page Six reported that he accidentally broke a model’s nose on the dance floor.)
“I’m the worst,” he says. “I just move my pathetic body here and there and try to make people see that I dance. I show my body language, which apparently nobody understands.”
No worries, Javier, you can’t be great at eveything.
“Goya’s Ghosts” opens on July 20.