1 of 6 | Javier Bardem arrives for the 94th annual Academy Awards in Los Angeles in March 2022. He will be honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award at the San Sebastian Film Festival in September. File Photo by Jim Ruymen/UPI |
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May 12 (UPI) -- Spanish actor Javier Bardem will be honored for his career achievements at the San Sebastian Film Festival in September.
The star of films Dune, The Little Mermaid and No Country for Old Men, which won him the Best Supporting Actor Academy Award in 2008, will receive the fest's Donostia award, which recognizes an artist for their lifetime work. Bardem will also appear on the posters for the festival, which run from September 22 to 30 in Donostia-San Sebastián, Spain in the Basque Country.
Bardem, 54, has been a supporter of the festival throughout his career. His first time at the festival was in 1993 when he was promoting the film Golden Balls. Since then, he's been at least 20 times in the last three decades, most recently in 2021 with the film The Good Boss.
Most recently starring as King Triton in The Little Mermaid with Halle Bailey, Bardem comes from an acting family. His grandfather Rafael Bardem, and his mother, Pilar Bardem, were both actors in his native Spain. He's the most awarded Spanish actor in history, with his wife, Penelope Cruz and fellow Spanish-born thespian Antonio Banderas, coming in behind him.
He's been honored by the festival before. In 1994, he won San Sebastian's Silver Shell for Best Actor for two movies, Imanol Uribe's Numbered Days and Gonzalo Suárez's El detective y la muerte.
In his career, Bardem has played a wide variety of roles from his current one as an underwater king to the remorseless assassin in No Country. He says he utilizes the tools of an acting coach and has attended acting seminaries to hone his craft.
"You go to that space, to especially leave your tricks, leave your knowing, leave your tendencies out of the picture," he told the Off Camera show in 2018. "So when you go next to work, you don't do the same over and over and over. You try to be as honest as you can but don't bring all the bag of the thing [s] you know work."
He added, "Don't lie, don't be fake, don't pretend, don't manipulate. Let's try to be as honest as we can when we do a role. And that's hard because its hard to be honest in life."
Bardem will receive the award at the festival's Kursaal Auditorium on Sept. 22.
