Javier Ángel Encinas Bardem is a Spanish actor, who is perhaps best known for portraying Anton Chigurh in the Coen brothers' 2007 neo-western crime thriller film No Country for Old Men (in which he won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor), Raoul Silva (born Tiago Rodriguez) in Sam Mendes' 2012 James Bond spy film Skyfall, Stilgar in Denis Villeneuve's 2021 epic sci-fi film Dune, and Hector P. Valenti in the 2022 musical comedy film Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile.
For Disney, he played Captain Salazar in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales and King Triton in the 2023 live-action adaptation of The Little Mermaid.
Bardem was born in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, in the Canary Islands, Spain. His mother, Pilar Bardem, was an actress, and his father, José Carlos Encinas Doussinague, was the son of a cattle rancher. According to Pilar's memoirs, José had a "capricious and violent will," and shot up the front door. He changed jobs more than ten times, leading to evictions and the children going hungry. The two separated shortly after Javier's birth. His mother raised him and his elder siblings, Carlos and Mónica, alone (another sibling died shortly after birth), both of whom have also pursued an acting career. His father died of leukemia in 1995.
Bardem came from a long line of filmmakers and actors dating back to the earliest days of Spanish cinema. He is a grandson of actors Rafael Bardem and Matilde Muñoz Sampedro (sister of actresses Mercedes and Guadalupe), and a nephew of screenwriter and director Juan Antonio Bardem. On the latter's side, he is a cousin of filmmaker Miguel Bardem. He came from a political background, as his uncle Juan Antonio was imprisoned by Franco for his anti-fascist films. Bardem was brought up in the Roman Catholic faith by his grandmother.
As a child, he spent time at theatres and on film sets. At age six, he made his first film appearance, in Fernando Fernán Gómez's El Pícaro (The Scoundrel). He also played rugby for the junior Spanish National Team. Though he grew up in a family full of actors, Bardem did not see himself going into the family business, and painting was his preferred medium. He went on to study painting for four years at Madrid's Escuela de Artes y oficios. In need of money, he took acting jobs to support his painting but felt he was a bad painter and eventually abandoned it as a career.