Javier Bardem

The background - your own history - is way more important than what you can achieve as a professional.

When I was born, there was a very isolated idea of what it meant to be a man or a woman, and you belonged to one gender or the other.

Everybody in Spain is sick of me. But in America, there's curiosity about the new kid on the block who doesn't speak English very well. The attention makes me feel vulnerable, which is something I hadn't felt in a while. But I like it.

I do a job and am lucky enough to do a job that I love, but it is a hard one. I'm not saying it is as hard as working in a coal mine, but it is still difficult in a different way. Sometimes you have to go through very strong emotional journeys and then come back to yourself. And that can be difficult to control.

I'm a great believer in stunt doubles. They do an amazing job.

I enjoy my job as long as I can create a character, otherwise it's boring.

Sometimes I say to myself, what are you doing in this absurd job? Why don't you go to Africa and help people? But I cannot help people, because I am a hypochondriac.

Some quality performances and movies have a chance to be rewarded, but it's not like it's a bible.

And the whole Oscar thing, that is just surreal: you spend months and months doing promotion, and then come back to reality with this golden thing in your hands. You put it in the office and then you just have to look at it sitting on the shelf. And, after about two weeks, you go: 'What is that doing there?'

When you put gas in your car you are making a political statement, because you are supporting the empires that control and continue the destruction of some countries.

The middle and working classes are paying the debt that the financial markets created.

Even in the darkest regions, people have discovered their right of freedom.