There are some benefits to working with a spouse, Javier Bardem says.
The actor, 57, teased his upcoming project with wife Penélope Cruz while speaking exclusively to Us at the Cape Fear finale screening at DGA New York Theater on Tuesday, July 21.
“Well, Bunker is the movie where we play this married couple, and it’s a very intimate, strong, and also humorous story about many things,” Bardem shared before gushing about director and writer Florian Zeller, whom he called “extraordinary.”
“The quality of the dialogues — the quality of what he is bringing into the story for us to reflect on — is really powerful, so I hope you watch it and enjoy it,” he said.
Javier Bardem Gets Emotional While Thanking Wife Penelope Cruz on Stage
In Bunker, which is slated for a theatrical release in the U.S. in early 2027, Bardem plays an architect whose marriage is tested when he accepts a project building a bunker for a billionaire. Cruz, 52, plays the wife of Bardem’s character.
According to Bardem, the trust between himself and Cruz as a real-life married couple helped them work together seamlessly.
“There’s a level of trust, of knowing how we work, that doesn’t need to be rehearsed — that saves a lot of time,” he explained.
Bardem and Cruz met in 1992 while playing love interests in the Spanish film Jamón, Jamón. However, their relationship did not turn romantic until 2007, when the pair reunited as costars and lovers in Woody Allen‘s Vicky Cristina Barcelona.
Bardem and Cruz tied the knot in an intimate ceremony in the Bahamas in 2010. They went on to welcome their first child, a son named Leo, in 2011, followed by daughter Luna in 2013.
Bardem and Cruz have collaborated a handful of other times over the years, having costarred in the 2013 thriller The Counselor, the 2017 biographical crime film Loving Pablo and the 2018 psychological thriller Everybody Knows.
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“Life has changed. We have grown,” Bardem told Vulture in 2019 of working with Cruz while raising their family. “Everything is different once you’re a family. That is the priority, as it should be. We’re no exception from that. We work as hard as we can, but we recognize how hard we can work depends on each other’s needs. It’s important not to be confused by fiction. Fiction is fiction, reality is its own thing.”
While it’s been a few years since Bardem and Cruz have appeared on screen together, the F1 actor has been making headlines for his starring role in Cape Fear, a psychological thriller miniseries about an unreformed convict who is released from prison and sets out for revenge on Anna Bowden (Amy Adams), the lawyer who represented him 17 years earlier in court. The show also stars Patrick Wilson, Joe Anders, Lily Collias, CCH Pounder and Malia Pyles.
Cape Fear is based on the novel The Executioners by John D. MacDonald and its film adaptations in 1962 and 1991.
Adams, 51, and Pyles, 26, both teased the show’s upcoming finale while speaking to Us at the screening on Tuesday.
“Complex,” Adams said, using one word to describe the episode. Pyles added, “I think there’s elements of the original or the Scorsese version that we bring into our finale. It’s quite the ride. There’s a lot of close calls. I think some characters finally get to see their revenge through.”
New episodes of Cape Fear drop on Apple TV on Fridays, with the finale streaming on July 31.
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