TORONTO — Remember “Nine”?

Javier Bardem does. He was set to star in Rob Marshall’s 2009 musical as the Fellini-inspired director who sidled up to slinky sexpots Marion Cotillard, Penelope Cruz, Kate Hudson, Nicole Kidman and Sophia Loren. It was the epitome of Hollywood musical flash, and a role, after much agony, that Bardem let go — and that Daniel Day- Lewis took instead.

And why the agony? It was over a screenplay that came along at the same time, called “Biutiful,” one that Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, the Mexican filmmaker of “21 Grams” and “Babel,” had written with Bardem in mind.

“It scared me,” says the actor, faced with deciding between the two projects. “I had this strong psychological and emotional response to the material. . . . And I had to read it three times, because I recognized in those pages that this is not a job of going to the set, saying the lines and going back home. It’s a journey, it’s a commitment . . . a personal, emotional, psychological commitment. And physical, too.”

Bardem, of course, made that commitment. “Biutiful” premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May, where the Spanish star shared the best-actor prize. “Biutiful” moved audiences to tears at the Toronto Film Festival in September, where this interview took place. And he was also honored with an Oscar nomination when the best-actor contenders were announced. “Biutiful” also received a nod for best foreign language film.

And it is, without doubt, an extraordinary performance. Bardem plays Uxbal, a Barcelona black marketeer who traffics in illegal workers — Senegalese street vendors, Chinese laborers —and who has been diagnosed with inoperable cancer. He has two children whom he loves deeply, and an ex-wife who is a drugged-out, boozed-up mess. Uxbal is also capable of communing with the dead—he has a psychic gift, both a blessing and a curse. And in the time he has left, he must try to put his life in order.

If Bardem was creepy and comically menacing as the death-dealing Chigurh in the Coen Brothers’ “No Country for Old Men”—a performance that won him the supporting-actor Oscar in 2008 — his work in “Biutiful” is something else. To say that an actor inhabits a character has become something of a cliche, but Bardem, with his heavy-lidded eyes and grief-heavy soul, drills down to the very core of Uxbal’s world in “Biutiful.” He is tough. He is haunted. He is loving. He is afraid. It’s staggering work.

“This story is like a Greek tragedy,” says Bardem, who speaks softly, in earnest but occasionally clumsy English. “Those plays were written by wise philosophers, to bring ideas to the audience and wake them up. And the major voice of those plays are the gods, who appear . . . in the play to remind the human beings of their weaknesses. Throwing at them the storms, the thunder, the earthquakes, the plagues, for them to overcome them and find themselves. . . .

“And here in this movie, it’s the same, but there are no gods. Death itself is the reminder. It’s like, ‘I’m here and you better fix your life, because there are so many things that are wrong.’ That’s why he has this gift, knowing what is there after death. Knowing what it means to be dead, for him to be more aware of his duties in life.

“So, I think it’s a movie that reminds us of all life’s tragedies . . . and to find in ourselves the need of simple, emotional compassion and love and care. Don’t let the flame be extinguished. It should be glowing all the time, to warm the kids, to warm the community, to warm your little place. Like, don’t let the cold” — and here he makes a whooshing sound— “extinguish it, blow it out.”

Bardem married his countrywoman and frequent co-star Cruz last summer — the two had first worked together in 1992’s burning-hot “Jamon jamon,” and began a relationship while working on Woody Allen’s “Vicky Cristina Barcelona” (a very different view of the city, compared to “Biutiful”) in 2007. The couple has a baby boy.

Which made it even trickier playing Uxbal, a man who moves among a city’s under-class. To prepare for his role in “Biutiful,” Bardem visited shadowy corners of Barcelona. Fear and poverty were palpable.

“It was shocking,” he says, acknowledging, too, that he couldn’t help but feel a sense of guilt.

 


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