Javier Bardem stars in 'Love in the Time of Cholera'

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Early in Javier Bardem's career, it looked as if the histrion with the heavy-lidded eyes and athletic construct mightiness pulling an Antonio Banderas - depository financial institution on some sexed-up roles in early Pedro Almodóvar movies and fly to Film Industry to go the up-to-the-minute macho, studio-certified Latin Lover.

Nothing of the kind happened.

Bardem, a former participant on Spain's national rugby football squad who first drew international attending for 1992's "Jamón, Jamón," in which he plays an underclothes model, chose to dedicate himself to a assortment of ambitious roles. Among them are his nuanced portraitures of Cuban author Reinaldo Arenas, who battled homophobia, in "Before Night Falls" (2000) and Ramón Sampedro, a quadriplegic who fought for decennaries for the right to die, in "The Sea Inside" (2004). Moviegoers might also retrieve Bardem for his sinister, understated cameo as a drug Godhead in the 2004 thriller "Collateral."

The histrion acquires to play average again, as a shady psychotic killer, in "No Country for Old Men," the Coen brothers' play that opened this weekend. Daily Variety's Sir Alexander Robertus Todd Mary McCarthy called Bardem's public presentation "one of cinema's most original and memorable scoundrels in recent memory."

In the meantime, in a movie that open ups Friday, Bardem, 38, tax returns to the type of fictional character he put aside old age ago, person whose life goes around around carnal pleasure. But this chap is no ordinary hedonist: It's Florentino Ariza, the complex, tragicomic hero of Gabriel García Márquez's darling novel "Love in the Time of Cholera."

During his long life in this epic poem story, put in the Caribbean Sea in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Florentino meticulously catalogues his escapades with, to be exact, 622 women. His ground for remaining so active? He must ease the lovesickness that tortures him. His true love, Fermina Daza, won't have got him.

"Love in the Time of Cholera," an English-language film, was directed by the Englishman Microphone Newell, whose former film was an version of another popular literary work: "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire."

Bardem, smoky-voiced and easygoing, spoke from Los Angeles while on a promotion tour.

Q: Did you ever conceive of you'd better your English by acting in an version of one of the most famed novels ever written in Spanish?

A: No, never (laughs). I felt, like, yes, of course, you desire to make it in Spanish, but one thing I learned with "Before Night Falls" is that if the film works, people don't trouble oneself about the linguistic communication after five minutes. If the film doesn't work, the linguistic communication will be a barrier, a problem. Also, I thought that in those terms, we shouldn't be able to execute William Shakespeare in Spanish.

Q: Was it daunting to take on this role, given how august the book is?

A: Yes, you experience the duty of it, and you experience like there's no manner you can win the conflict of struggling against billions of people's imaginativenesses about how Florentino should be portrayed. So at the end of the day, you have got to confront your ain inherent aptitude and travel out there with your ain reading of it.

Q: Are there any cardinal scenes in the book that helped define Florentino for you?

A: There was one where I said, "OK, this is it." It was very simple: Hildebranda, the first cousin of Fermina, travels to see Florentino, and she's asked by Fermina, "How is he?" And she said, "Well, he's ugly, sad and very thin." I said, "Give me a couple of proceedings and I will believe about my ain material and I can acquire sad. But thin? Oh, my God!" So the first thing I had to do, as soon as I got to Colombia, was lose a batch of weight. I had a opportunity to speak to Márquez on the phone, and he told me, "I always saw him as a individual who have been beaten so many modern times that he walks like those isolated domestic dogs that are scared," and that's what I tried to portray.

Q: Florentino have affairs with 622 women, and we see you frolicking with a figure of them onscreen.

A: Yeah. I said to Microphone Newell, "When are we doing the version where we see all of these personal business 1 after the other?" He said, "OK, we make that as an other on the DVD."

Q: This is the portion of the interview where you speak about how much histrions must endure for their art.

A: No, it's fun because it's always a very uncomfortable state of affairs to make love scenes. Everybody pretends not to be uncomfortable. Everybody's like, "OK, let's make this!" And they are pretending.

Q: Scanning your filmography, one won't happen statute titles like "Superman" or "Zorro." How will you ever go a superstar if you keep such as high standards?

A: I don't know. Always my precedence have been to seek to be in functions that pushing me to uncomfortable places, no? Otherwise it's not fun.

Q: What kinds of fictional characters pull you?

A: I think the same fictional characters that pull me as people - people in struggle, people in contradiction, people dealing with the worst and the best and trying to happen a manner out of both of them in order to happen a manner in the middle.

Q: You'll be in Woody Allen's adjacent yearly outing, "Vicky Cristina Barcelona." Woody Woody Allen is keeping the secret plan a secret, as always, but let's take a wild guess: There's this guy, played by you, and he acquires to kip with two women named Vicky and Cristina.

A: OK, you got it (laughs).

Q: Is this a blithe role?

A: I don't cognize what the tone of voice will be. It depends so much on what he does, how he sets it together. But it's a film about relationships. It's a film about the human spirit trying to happen an equilibrium.

Q: Perhaps you've already heard this, but Hola magazine have published images of you and Penélope Cruz together at the beach and claims that you're now a couple. Rich Person you canceled your subscription to Hola magazine?

A: I don't belong to any magazine (laughs).

LOVE IN THE time OF cholera (R) open ups Friday at Bay Area theaters.

E-mail Toilet McMurtrie at .