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ELVIS MITCHELL: Since the last time we spoke, shortly after you'd completed Alejandro Amenabar's Mar Adentro [2004], you've made four English-language movies with four very different--and very distinctive--directors: Milos Forman on Goya's Ghosts; the Coen brothers on No Country for Old Men; Mike Newell on Love in the Time of Cholera; and, most recently, Woody Allen on his next film, which is set in Spain. What have the last few years been like for you?

JAVIER BARDEM: Crazy. It's true that I have a chance to work with people who have done so much in this business--people who I admire. Working with Milos Forman was an experience of a lifetime. He ...