Javier Bardem played one of the cinema’s most iconic villains with his Oscar-winning turn in the Coen brothers’ No Country for Old Men. His villainy résumé adds another chilling chapter with this Friday’s arrival of the latest installment of the Disney stalwart franchise, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales. We caught up with the brilliant actor at the recent press day and explored a pirate’s booty of topics.
Bardem is Captain Salazar, a Spanish armada leader who meets his maker when a young Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp, back for his fifth turn as the iconic and lovable pirate) sends him to his grave. He has been living as a cursed ghost for years and out of the blue, he catches a break. He meets someone (Geoffrey Rush’s Captain Hector Barbossa) who can deliver him to Sparrow, thus breaking his curse and allowing him to saunter off into the sea sunset in peace.
Inspiration for his character came from the most brilliant of places. Bardem looked to his Spanish heritage and its rich history of battling pirates, just as Britain has — as has been portrayed in the previous Pirates of the Caribbean movies. It was also another Spanish tradition that truly fueled the fire of the Academy Award winner towards bringing his vengeful Spanish pirate hunter to life… so to speak.
“One of the things I like the most is to research, and to start getting crazy with the ideas. [Pirate hunters] were very strong at the time, but also, they were from the south of Spain. That gave me the idea of, okay, south of Spain, the flavor, the flamingo, but the accent and also this thing about the bull… the raging bull,” Bardem said. “Then everything made sense for me.”
His input into the brilliance of this baddie didn’t stop there. The actor was supposed to have this liquid that would turn his teeth a darker shade of grey, almost black. Bardem had other ideas with it, and it produces one of the more memorable aspects of his evil on the big screen — the black liquid that is always seeping from his ghostly mouth.
“The first day we were going to shoot I was going to shoot with Geoffrey, that scene. They gave me this liquid to bare my teeth, my rotten teeth. I said, ‘No, fuck that.’ I drank it. Because I thought it was better to have this black liquid coming out of his mouth. It’s not blood. It’s rage,” Bardem said. “I’m not a huge fan of bull fighting myself — when you see the animal suffering on the arena, the blood is almost dark. We know the blood is dark, but the bull’s is black, almost black. I like the idea that it’s pouring out of his mouth, the rage of being wounded.”
His partner in that first scene was fellow Oscar winner Rush. “I did the scene and he was not expecting that. I guess I spit in his face a little bit. I call [the liquid] monkey poop because I was trying to find a name for it and there was no such thing. It tastes bad. You do it for the art,” Bardem said and laughed.
Relatively speaking and considering the jaw-dropping look his latest villainous part has, turns out the make-up chair was not all that long for the Spaniard. “The makeup was real makeup — so that was three hours long, which is not long for such a great job. Then the hair was long too, but I didn’t know what I was going to look like after I saw the movie. When I saw it, I was very blown away by it.”
Upon seeing the final CG product of himself on the big screen, Bardem could not have been more impressed with director Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg’s SFX team and how they worked with his performance to dictate the special effects. “They were telling me, ‘Don’t worry about all that. You do your thing and then we’ll adjust,’” Bardem said.
The concept of rage permeated our conversation with Bardem. It is clear after witnessing Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales that the thespian hit the nail on the head when it comes to what it is that drives Captain Salazar. “Rage brings pain to the one who suffers it, emotional and physical pain. I wanted to create this person who is taking my pain.”
Bardem’s wife, Penelope Cruz, starred in the previous installment — Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. So, did the wife have any advice for her husband as he headed off to paradise to film the franchise’s next chapter?
“When I was on the set of On Stranger Tides, the detail of the production was so incredible. I knew it was going to be a great ride. She told me, ‘You’re going to have fun. You won’t have a problem when you work with Johnny because he’s going to make you laugh.’ It’s true. It’s not like he wants to make you laugh. You laugh because of the character, because you are a movie-goer. You think you know the character for so long, and then he’s talking to you normally and boom! All of a sudden he becomes this guy and here he is. You go, ‘Wow!’ Everything he does and says is brilliant because he’s perceptive and he really can be very funny. In the first two days I had to say, ‘Sorry, I have to cut.’ I was laughing. So, she was right,” Bardem reported. “He will never let you down.”
Bardem, who just signed on to be Frankenstein’s Monster in Universal’s reboot of their classic movie monsters series, has a long history of balancing big movies like Pirates of the Caribbean and smaller movies as well. “I’m gifted, blessed, by the chance of doing both kinds of movies. You do these kinds of movies also because of a paycheck. It helps you to keep on doing other movies that you know you’ll be paid in two years. That’s not the only reason we make movies like this, not for me. Otherwise, how do you defend it? How do you starve for it, if it’s only for the money?” Bardem said.
“We all want money. We all need money, but in this case, you can’t put yourself in things just for money because you are not going to be able to perform. In this case it was about the joy of belonging to the franchise and bringing this animal to screen. I don’t get married to one style of movie making. I’m an actor. I do this. I do that. I just want to keep on working, that’s all.”