Javier Bardem‘s “Skyfall” villain Raoul Silva is widely considered to be one of the best James Bond baddies across the entire franchise, a sadistic and flirtatious cyber-terrorist with bleached-blond locks who gave 007 arguably his most homoerotic scene to date.
“We are the last two rats. We can either eat each other, or eat everyone else,” Silva says as he unbuttons the shirt of Daniel Craig’s Bond, tied to a chair. He then moves his hands down Bond’s thighs, offering “Well, there’s a first time for everything” (to which Bond famously replies “What makes you think this is my first time?”)
As it happens, it was Bardem himself who wanted to dial up the sexuality of his character, and found a willing director in Sam Mendes.
“We went through the reading of it and [Mendes] was so open to what I was proposing to do with the sexuality of the character,” Bardem revealed at a special Screen Talk at the BFI London Film Festival on Sunday. “Because I said, ‘Listen, all the villains have done everything to destroy the world, but what about something person? What about something like, besides destroying the world, he wants to have sex with Bond.'”
According to Bardem, Mendes’ first response was was “‘Let me talk to the studio’… and the studio was very brave!” The scene, he noted was one that “now lasts in the memory of the audience” because it “put Bond out of his place in a moment with a situation that he’s not been to before — and the way he comes out of it is brilliant.”
Bardem also revealed that in the prison cell scene in “Skyfall” with Craig (who he said was “adorable”) and Judi Dench as M (“what a gift!”), he was so overcome that he forgot his lines.
“Sam said action and then [Dench] comes in and nobody talks… I forgot the lines!,” he said, to which Mendes asked him what was going on. “I’m sorry, I just realized that I’m in a James Bond movie. Excuse me, I just saw Judi Dench as M and James Bond looking at me and thought ‘Fuck, I’m in a James Bond movie!’ Sorry, let’s do it again!”
Across a wide-ranging conversation about his career and craft, Bardem — the first Spanish actor to win the best actor Oscar (for “No Country for Old Men”), holder of a record 5 Goya leading actor awards and one of a select group to have won Venice’s Volpi Cup twice — discussed a selection of his more than 65 screens credits and collaborations with numerous filmmakers. But he even went as far back as his first brush with acting as a five year old in the 1974 Spanish TV series “El Picaro,” which starred his mother, the late actress Pilar Bardem.
“My mother was in the show and this kid got sick and she said, ‘Don’t worry. I have my my kid,'” he revealed. In the scene, he said he started to cry. “And [the director] said ‘I love it, I love it, he’s a dramatic actor!’ And he was right!”
Bardem also joked that for “many years” until his mother passed away in 2021, he wondered “where is my salary” for his appearance. “Still today, I don’t know what she did with my money.”
Alongside his screen talk, Bardem has two films at the London Film Festival, which runs until Oct. 17, including Florian Zeller’s “Bunker” alongside his wife Penelope Cruz and Esteban Martinez’ “The Beloved.”