Who was the first Spanish actor to win an Oscar?
Spain was a hotbed of art in the 20th century. Painters like Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dalí, and Antoni Gaudí remain household names around the world, while filmmakers like Luis Buñuel brought their trademark surrealism to the big screen. More recently, Pedro Almodóvar has brought Spanish cinema to the forefront of awards conversations.
The first Spaniards to win an Oscar were Gil Parrondo and Antonio Mateos, who won the award for production design for their work on the war drama Patton in 1970. The very next year, Parrondo won again for the film Nicholas and Alexandra. Spanish costume designers Yvonne Blake and Antonio Castillo won awards for the film that year as well.
Despite its illustrious history of art and filmmaking, Spain didn’t get to see one of its actors take home an Oscar until the 2000s. Javier Bardem was the first Spanish performer to be nominated for a coveted award in 2001 for Julian Schnabel’s film Before Night Falls, but he lost to Russell Crowe, who won for his performance in Ridley Scott’s Gladiator.
Bardem got a second chance seven years later, this time for the ‘Best Supporting Actor’ award for his stomach-churning role as a serial killer in the Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men. He won, beating fellow nominees Casey Affleck for The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Philip Seymour Hoffman for Charlie Wilson’s War, Hal Holbrook for Into the Wild, and Tom Wilkinson for Michael Clayton.
Few would argue with the way the award shook out. Bardem’s performance as Anton Chigurh remains one of the most memorable and chilling in cinema history and regularly tops lists of the most unforgettable villains of all time. No Country for Old Men swept the Oscars that year, and although there is a strong case to be made that the ‘Best Picture’ award should have gone to Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood, there is no arguing with Bardem’s win.
How many Spanish actors have won Oscars?
Although Bardem was the first Spanish actor to win an Oscar, he was quickly followed by his real-life partner Penelope Cruz, who won the ‘Best Supporting Actress’ award the next year for her role in Vicky Christina Barcelona. Incidentally, Bardem was her co-star in the film.
To date, no other Spanish actor, though there have been several nominations. Cruz had already been nominated for ‘Best Actress’ in 2007 for Volver, and she earned another nod from the Academy in 2021 for Parallel Mothers, both of which were directed by Almodovar.
Bardem has also been nominated since his win, becoming the first Spanish male actor to be nominated twice in 2010 for the movie Biutiful. In 2021, the same year Cruz was nominated for Parallel Mothers, he received his third nomination, this time for the Aaron Sorkin biopic Being the Ricardos.
The only other Spanish actors to earn nominations are Antonio Banderas for 2019’s Pain and Glory, Ana de Armas for 2022’s Blonde (she was born in Cuba but has Spanish citizenship), and Karla Sofia Gascon for Emilia Perez.
