What makes a good Bond villain? Award-winning actor Javier Bardem, who played the sinister Raoul Silva in Skyfall, was arguably one of the best baddies in the Daniel Craig series of 007 movies. Critics certainly praised Bardem’s memorable performance as Silva. In December, 2012, for example, Bardem won a Satellite Award in the USA for Best Supporting Actor for his role as Silva, and further awards and recognition soon followed. His menacing performance also won him a big following in the Bond fan community.
Interestingly, the role had not been Bardem’s first encounter with the EON franchise. Interviewed in the weekend magazine of the British newspaper The Guardian on October 13th, 2012, the Spanish actor revealed that he had been offered parts in the EON franchise before. The interview was conducted by Emma Brockes of the Guardian in a London hotel, as part of a special Skyfall day for the British media, where journalists were also shown short clips from what was then the new Bond film in a viewing theatre in Soho.
The Nature of Villainy
The then 43-year old Spanish actor talked with the Guardian about both his role as the new 007 baddie and about his acting career generally. After a career that had included the ruthless killer Anton Chigurh in the highly-praised No Country For Old Men, and was now about to be topped by Bond’s nemesis Raoul Silva in the 23rd 007 movie, Brockes asked Bardem whether he found himself ‘sinister’? ‘Every time I wake up’, he replied, laughing loudly. ‘I look in the mirror to brush my teeth and it’s very sinister. Ugh, look at that nose; look at those eyes. Ugh, my tone of voice’.
Brockes noted that Bardem’s casual self-mockery made him seem a very European kind of actor, an ocean away from the worst narcissism of his profession. Bardem lives in Madrid with his famous actress wife Penelope Cruz and, when he is not acting, he said he helped run a bar with his sister. He apparently called flying to Los Angeles ‘going to the office’ and tried to stay out of Hollywood as much as possible. According to Brockes, being hired for the new Bond movie Skyfall was a very big deal for Bardem, ‘even though he’d been offered parts in previous films in the franchise’. This time, however, the confluence of a good script and the acclaimed Sam Mendes as the film’s director had persuaded him to say yes.
The preview clips shown to journalists in a 3-minute showreel in the viewing theatre in Soho were mostly scenes with Judi Dench as ‘M’, and Bardem commented that appearing in scenes with Dame Judi was like standing in front of a water cannon: ‘When she opens her mouth and looks you in the eyes, you’re like, “Wow! This is a big deal”. You feel a force of nature against your chest’. Bardem also said there was a scene in the movie in which he appeared with both Dench and Daniel Craig: ‘And I looked at them both and forgot the lines. There was a silence and Sam said, “Cut, what’s wrong?” And I said, “I’m sorry, man, I just realised I’m in a James Bond movie and M and James Bond are looking at me!”‘
At another point in the Guardian interview, Bardem was asked about how he managed to do such a good psychopath. He responded that it was a question of going back in your mind to when you’ve felt ‘murderous rage’, as everyone has, and just drawing it out. He said that this was the ‘fun part’ of his job – emotional tourism. He added that it was about getting ‘out of yourself for a little while’, and seeing the world through different eyes.
There is no doubt this came through strongly on screen. Silva was genuinely menacing, a man who was out for complete revenge against what he saw as ‘betrayal’ by his old MI6 boss ‘M’. As far as he was concerned, this had been a ‘sinful’ act: at one point he demanded that Judi Dench’s ‘M’ should: ‘Think on your sins’. His very first encounter with Craig’s 007, where he enters a long room and appears to walk towards Bond for what seems like an eternity, had cinema audiences genuinely beguiled. The tension was palpable, helped by some dialogue about ‘rats’ and a seemingly homoerotic interest in Bond’s body on the part of Silva.
The combination of charm and sinister threat that oozed from Silva’s every pore was also put to excellent effect in the rest of the movie. Despite accusing his former boss ‘M’ of sins, in a sense Silva was the ultimate sinner, happy to shoot anybody who stood in his way with real relish. The psychopathic drive at the core of Silva’s personality was also on full display in the climax to the film which took place at Bond’s ancestral home, Skyfall Lodge in Scotland, and ended in the tragic death of ‘M’ in the nearby Bond family chapel.
Speaking to the popular film magazine Total Film a year after the premiere of Skyfall, Bardem commented: ‘I’m very proud of Skyfall. I think it’s a great movie’. The movie’s incredible box office returns more than warranted such a view.
For those in search of further insights into Bardem’s approach to villainy and to playing evil baddies in general, in October, 2018, Bardem gave a series of interviews about his role as the Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar in Loving Pablo. In an interview for Esquire magazine, for example, Bardem revealed that his ‘secret’ to playing the perfect bad guy is to convey a total lack of empathy, something which, he said, is the ‘scariest thing’. He explained further: ‘At least with a glimpse of empathy, you can pray to that; when there is none, there’s nothing you can do’.
Bardem added that he cannot stand any kind of violence in real life: ‘It’s funny because I do movies like No Country For Old Men or Loving Pablo, and I can understand the true sense of violence, but it is something that gets me nervous. I don’t like seeing violence or seeing fights. I can’t watch a violent movie’.
Did You Know?
Bond’s ancestral home, the gothic and gloomy-looking Skyfall Lodge in Scotland, which Silva and his men try to capture in their pursuit of Bond and ‘M’, was actually a set built at Hankley Common, near Elstead in Surrey, England. The area was chosen for its similarity to Scottish heathland, and the wonders of CGI (computer-generated imagery) were employed to provide a suitably icy-looking lake and rugged terrain in the far background in the movie’s lodgehouse sequences.
