There are fewer more captivating actors in the world right now than Javier Bardem. The Spanish star is known mostly for two roles – as villains in Bond classic Skyfall, and thriller No Country For Old Men.
He won an Oscar for the latter role, as the ice-cold assassin, Anton Chigurh, a man so psychopathic even his haircut was unnerving.
Ice-cool Javier is getting angry about global warming, though.
I went to New York last week to meet him as he spoke to the United Nations about his trip to the Antarctic to see the damage climate change has wrought on the world.
As a keen environmentalist, Javier told me he has no time for the people who deny the problem – people such as the President of the United States.
“That’s a joke,” he told me.
“Who, today, doesn’t believe it to be true?
“I mean, look at the weather. Look at all the climate change catastrophes – hurricanes, heat waves.
“I’m from Spain, and the heatwaves lately have been humongous – almost impossible to bear.
“We are really destroying a lot of our nature.
“And if you want to deny that, it is because of economic interests, there’s no other reason.
“When I spoke to the UN I just gave my experience on a personal level of how it was to be on the Greenpeace Antarctic Sunrise, to go to the Antarctic and to have the experience of being a witness of so much beauty and so much fragility as well.
“People are saying, we need to protect this, for Christ’s sake.” It is clearly a topic Javier is very passionate about – he spoke to me at great length about how much he wanted to help spread the environmental message of Greenpeace.
Javier is a father of two young children, and the 50-year-old was at the UN because he deeply cares about the planet.
“Scientists say it’s pretty bad,” he said.
“And I’m a father of two kids – eight and six – and I didn’t want scientists telling them the world is going to collapse and all that.
“But the truth is that we are at a crossroads where strong decisions have to be made from all of us, on a personal level, and we know how difficult that is to do.
“No. For me, it’s more of a rational fact. Seeing how we are damaging nature and our world around.
“Being a father, I ask, what are we going to give them in the future?
“How can we survive from here to 20 years from now, with the heat that is going to be on Earth?
“And that’s why we are trying to make some noise about it.
“Because we need the support. And we want it to happen in the best way possible.”
If I was a politician, I’d certainly listen – otherwise Javier might pay a visit!
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