Possibly the only cooler role than getting the gig playing James Bond is playing a Bond villain with a long and illustrious line of actors creating some of the most memorable bad guys: Donald Pleasance, Telly Savalas and others as Blofeld, Yaphet Kotto as Dr. Kananga in Live and Let Die, Christopher Lee as Scaramanga (The Man with the Golden Gun) and more recent villains played by Christopher Walken, Sean Bean, Jonathan Pryce and Mads Mikkelsen.
For the 23rd James Bond movie, Skyfall, you can add Javier Bardem to that list, playing Raoul Silva, making it only the second time that an Oscar-winning actor has taken on the role. Silva’s another quirky and unforgettable villain for Bardem, following his turn as Anton Chigurh in the Coens’ No Country for Old Men, for which he won that Oscar.
In the video interview below, we spoke with Bardem about:
* How his character is introduced in such a unique way
* Shooting that introduction
* Silva’s quirks and how they were developed
* How important it was for his character to make others uncomfortable
* Playing a character that might be compared to previous characters he’s played plus other Bond villains
* Whether it’s hard to remove himself from characters like Silva and Anton Chigurh
* Talking about his crazy hairstyles and why that’s the case (specifically asking about his spikey hair for Ridley Scott’s The Counselor)
Plus, stay tuned for that scene at the end of the interview, which is exactly what we saw being filmed when we visited Pinewood Studios earlier this year.
