I Saw Him First

Hear ye, hear ye, all you American Johnny and Janey come-latelys: Javier Bardem has been my boyfriend for about fifteen years now. If you've just recently seen him, all sexy and gorgeous at the Screen Actors Guild Awards with his tuxedo and open white shirt sans tie and thought, "Who the hell is this?" and then realized it was the psycho with the Dutch boy from No Country for Old Men, you're too late, my friend. You're also a little tardy if you vaguely remember him from the 2001 Academy Awards when he was nominated for Best Actor for Before Night Falls, though you do get bonus points if you actually saw Before Night Falls. Double points if you were in awe of his Cuban-accented English, his gait, and Johnny Depp's uncredited cameo in drag.

No, Javier and I go way back. Back to that delightfully dark Bigas Lunas romp that debuted another Spanish treasure, Penelope Cruz, called Jamon, Jamon (subtitled A Tale of Ham and Passion). Ay, mi amor! What a filthy, gorgeous pig he was then, arrogantly displaying his wares as a model auditioning in his underwear. The next time I saw him, he was a detective in Pedro Almodovar's Carne tremula (Live Flesh) who, after being shot in the line of duty (sort of) is permanently in a wheelchair. He compensates by playing basketball for the national team, and by demonstrating amazing oral technique in one of the hottest sex scenes in film. Then I was mesmerized by his portrayal of Reynaldo Arenas in Before Night Falls: he looked different, he sounded different, and he brought his mother and sister to the Academy Awards with him.

His first English-speaking role was in John Malkovich's The Dancer Upstairs, a political thriller set in the seventies in Latin America, and later I saw Mondays in the Sun, a dreary story of workers down on their luck. Javier looked about fifty years old in that one. Recently I saw one of his very first films, Huevos de oro, and was enchanted by it, but only because of the ending: the brute gets what he deserves, and there's a three-way that involves Javier and Benicio Del Toro. Yes, you read that correctly: rent it now.

Javier, por supuesto, doesn't think he's handsome at all. He chose his words carefully: "I mean, look at this face". Indeed. He is not pretty. His features are large and broad. His nose may have been broken: he used to play rugby for the national team in Spain. But he knew enough to run from handsome leading man roles and instead found characters more interesting to play.

He comes from a long line of actors. Accepting his SAG award he said, "My grandparents were actors, and when they died, they couldn't be buried in the cemetery because actors were thought to be homosexuals and prostitutes." He's seems unafraid to say things, maybe because he's not American. When Spain legalized same-sex marriage in 2005, he was quoted as saying, "mañana mismo, sólo para joder a la Iglesia". Translation: If I were gay, I'd get married tomorrow, just to piss off the Church. How can you not love that?

The voice. The eyes. The smile. The perfection of expression that so many non-native English speakers have while speaking English. The devil may care attitude. The shamelessness.Maybe I didn't see him first. But I sure as hell saw him before you did.

Unless your name is Penelope Cruz.