Gael García Bernal – The Reluctant Movie Star

Gael García Bernal is quickly rising from the ranks of acting obscurity to global recognition and fame – but for Bernal, obscurity actually suits him just fine.

Gael García Bernal is a cool guy, tall and lean – thoughtful and quiet with a soft laugh that he engages in often. This well-spoken Mexican-born actor is on the verge of real acting superstardom, but he faces that reluctantly. “You know, I like this right now, what I am doing, meaningful films,” said Bernal. “I don’t understand why everyone assumes it is the goal of every actor to be in huge Hollywood blockbuster movies – that certainly is not the case with me.” Wearing his black hair closely cropped and dressed in faded worn jeans and a t-shirt, Bernal exudes that kind of cool that movies stars of the past, like James Dean, exuded before him, but Bernal will have none of such a comparison – “No, no, no, please – not the ‘actor of his generation’ description, please! That has been a curse on every young actor that it has ever been put upon!”

Bernal has dark penetrating eyes that often dart around the room as if looking for inspiration. His English is perfect (he was born in Guadalajara, Mexico, on November 30, 1978), and he is currently riding the wave of fabulous reviews and recognition that a few terrific reviews in a row have brought him. “Keeping all this in perspective is what I find to be the most difficult challenge at the moment,” said Bernal.

Bernal got his first professional job at the age of 11 on a Mexican television series, but it wasn’t until 2000 when he really started to gain notice by appearing in the brilliant Mexican film Amores Perros. He then made an even bigger splash a year later when he hit screens with the steamy, controversial Y Tu Mamá También. “The reaction to that film really surprised me,” said Bernal. “We had made it originally as a small, experimental little risqué movie and it turned out to be the talk of every coffee shop in the cinema-going world.”

And from that point on, he has been fielding Hollywood offers galore, and turning virtually all of them down to concentrate more on films and stories that move him personally. At the 2004 Toronto International Film Festival, Bernal had two very high profile, wonderfully unique films showing: The Motorcycle Diaries, in which Bernal plays the young Ernesto “Che” Guevara, and Pedro Almodóvar’s Bad Education. In The Motorcycle Diaries, Bernal plays the future revolutionary before he became El Che, as a young medical student on an eye-opening, consciousness-inspiring motorcycle trip through South America. “I had played Che before,” said Bernal, referring to the 2002 television mini-series called Fidel in which Bernal played Che in a supporting role, “but in The Motorcycle Diaries I was playing him more as a man than as an icon – that was very interesting to me because we could show the world that Che was not just some face that rich young girls put on their t-shirts without knowing anything about him, but rather a man who was deeply affected by the suffering and inequality going on around him and because of that decided he had to do something about it.”

And where does Bernal go from here? Like the career path he has followed up until now, the future films he has committed to will likely be discussed with the same wonder and admiration as his last few. Next up for him are three films in a row: The King, in which he plays… Elvis; a very secretive science fiction film called The Science of Sleep; and then a larger historical epic called Alatriste in which he co-stars with Viggo Mortensen.

And is he surprised at how popular he has gotten so quickly? Bernal is quick to flash a bright smile and reply, “Surprised? I don’t know if I have had the time to actually ponder that in those terms, I certainly feel very, very lucky to have somehow been chosen by filmmakers I admire for roles in their films.” And on the subject of Hollywood blockbusters, does that mean we will never see him in a huge Hollywood film? Is he committed to that? “Well, one should never say never about anything. But my fear of being in big effects-driven films is that I would simply be lost in the middle of it and end up looking around wondering what I am doing there.”

For right now though, Gael García Bernal is living the good life, la dolce vita, which to him means, “Enjoying this adventure, enjoying travelling around to film festivals and film locations and meeting wonderful people and doing work that interests me. For right now, I could not ask for anything more than that.”