Best Supporting Actor winner Javier Bardem has withdrawn from the production of the musical Nine, in which he would have starred opposite Best Actress winner Marion Cotillard, Penelope Cruz and the legendary Sophia Loren. Apparently, the great deal of work he's done lately, coupled with award season, has left him exhausted and he's taking a year off rather than playing a film director juggling all the women in his life in a musical adaptation of Fellini's 8 1/2.
Normally, one might say "oh, come on, working at the Fashion Bug exhausts me every day, but I can't take a year off." Bardem, however, is an actor who tends to live as his characters for as long as he's playing them. Living as someone like Anton Chigurh for months would be troubling for anyone, not to mention playing Florentino in Love in the Time of Cholera from ages 24 to 74. As his co-star in Cholera, Giovanna Mezzogiorno said about Bardem: "I can't take that weight for four months. Seeing Javier work - he's a very, very, very method actor, and he never goes out from that. That's very painful and I think it's really hard. Javier may be the only actor I've ever met in my life who gives literally everything to the movie. During the movie, everything he does, everything he says, everything he lives is for the movie. He never cuts from the movie. He's very absorbed by the movie and nothing else matters, and that's very strong to see. That's hard."
Also, "award season" is not just the month between Oscar announcements and Oscar handouts. It starts many months beforehand, and is an interminably long period of self-congratulation, self-aggrandizement and self-promotion that has to take its toll on any soul. Just look at what's happened to Joan Rivers.
Or maybe he's just worn out from reportedly having a threesome with Scarlett Johansson and Penelope Cruz and having it filmed for Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona. That'd make any straight man need a year off.
