When Javier Bardem turned down Tom Cruise: “I don’t see myself running on roofs”
There are many opportunities that budding actors would give their right arm to be offered, but once you’re an established star, these chances get considerably less impressive. No longer does the potential to star alongside a Hollywood icon like Tom Cruise or be directed by a filmmaking legend such as Steven Spielberg become all that special when you’re an A-lister yourself.
Javier Bardem reached that level of stardom by the early 2000s, having started his career as an actor in Spain, initially turning down Hollywood roles because his English just wasn’t good enough.
Yet, by 2000, he’d landed his first major English-speaking role in Before Night Falls, with his talents immediately becoming clear to a wider audience. He wound up earning an Oscar nomination for ‘Best Actor’, competing against the likes of Tom Hanks and Russell Crowe.
That was all he needed to secure his ticket into Hollywood, and soon he was offered some big roles, yet Bardem favours integrity over everything, and he wasn’t going to star in movies he wasn’t interested in purely because of the big names attached to them – he’d already worked with big names in Spain and become a well-known talent, and now he had an Oscar nomination under his belt. He didn’t need to work with Cruise or Spielberg to prove himself because he knew that some parts just weren’t right for him.
He was offered the chance to appear in Minority Report as Colin Farrell’s Danny, but Bardem had to go with his gut. Sure, this could elevate his status in Hollywood even further, but it would require him to step away from the kinds of films he was used to and instead do something a lot more physically demanding.
“I don’t see myself running on roofs,” the actor told GQ.
Clearly, a role needs more than a few famous names attached to it to attract Bardem, whose brother admitted in the same article that his sibling frequently turns down roles. While there are some actors out there who seem to take on any role that is offered to them – seemingly doing all they can to keep their place in the industry secured, no matter how unsuited they are for the parts they’re given – Bardem is much more selective.
That doesn’t mean that he isn’t going to take on a big Hollywood role if it feels right, of course. Bardem has appeared in many blockbusters that are a far cry from his early days in Spanish dramas, and in 2004, he actually did find himself sharing the screen with Cruise. He was cast as Felix Reyes-Torrena in Michael Mann’s Collateral, which fared well with critics.
Since then, he has divided his time between more mainstream fodder like Skyfall, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile, and The Little Mermaid, and slightly more challenging projects like No Country For Old Men (which of course won him an Oscar), Mother!, and Biutiful.
I can’t help but wonder if Bardem should’ve been more strict with his choices when it came to agreeing to be in Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile, which saw him star alongside a singing crocodile voiced by Shawn Mendes… I’d much rather have Minority Report on my resumé than that.
