Gael García Bernal’s film career is intimately linked to the Cannes Film Festival. It was here, exactly 25 years ago, that his first film was screened: Amores Perros, by Alejandro González Iñárritu, which changed the lives of everyone who participated in it. And it is precisely to this French festival that the Guadalajara-born actor has returned time and again with multiple films such as Babel, The Science of Sleep, Blindness, Bad Education, and Chicuarotes, which he directed himself.
“It’s crazy! Many emotions are running through me (because of the anniversary), but they are all positive.
“When we made Amores Perros, we didn’t know it would become a film that would endure over time, and now it’s a feature film that even my teenage children have seen.” “It’s fascinating,” the actor shared during an interview conducted on a terrace at the Palais des Festivals.
The green-eyed actor is at the French festival for the umpteenth time thanks to Magellan, the film by Filipino Lav Diaz in which he plays the Portuguese explorer and conquistador Ferdinand Magellan.
And although it may seem strange that a Mexican actor plays a European character who was a fundamental part of the “discovery” and colonization of the world, for Gael it’s one of the best decisions we’ve seen in the industry, as it breaks down barriers and shatters stereotypes.
“I’m very excited that Lav thought of me to play this character, because the normal thing would be to look for someone from Europe, but at the end of the day, the people who made those voyages with Magellan later became mestizos, which is what we are and where we come from,” he added.
Regarding his creative process for embodying the historic explorer, he explained that speaking of “method acting” seems somewhat pretentious and preferred to point out that in each project There are many factors that help, unconsciously or not, shape their characters.
“Entering the mental, emotional, and spiritual universe of the characters is fascinating. And as an actor, you draw so much from the things you research and the information available, even from the journey to the location where you’re going to film, from the colleagues you share the set with, and, in this case, even from the boats we filmed on.”
