Gael Garcia Bernal Didn’t Want To Become An Actor

Gael García Bernal was basically fated to be an actor.

Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images

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Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images

A note from Wild Card host Rachel Martin: I’ve had a lot of jobs in my life. I was a typist at an insurance company. An English teacher in Japan. I drove a bar cart around a golf course. I’ve worked at a whitewater rafting company and an art gallery. What I’m saying is it took me more than a minute to figure out what my thing was. You know, I’m frankly still figuring this out to some degree. And I am a grown-ass woman.

Other people get this gift early in their lives. A door opens. They go through it and that’s it. They’ve found their place, their purpose, their thing. I’m pretty sure that’s what happened to Gael García Bernal. His dad was a film director and his mom an actress. So Gael was thrust into the business really young. He starred in a Mexican telenovela when he was just 13. Then came theater school in London and a role in the film Amores Perros, which was nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign Film. And that changed everything.

Next came his iconic role in Y tu mamá también, alongside his lifelong friend Diego Luna. There had never been a coming of age movie like this one. It challenged all the norms around masculinity and sexual discovery. And in that movie, we see the beginnings of a long career for Gael García Bernal, one that would be filled with surprising, magical roles that upend the audience’s expectations.

Just like in his new limited series on Hulu called La Máquina. With each new film or show, it’s like he is just as hungry as he was in the early stages of his career. Acting came for him early and it stuck. And we are so lucky it did.

This Wild Card interview has been edited for length and clarity. Host Rachel Martin asks guests randomly-selected questions from a deck of cards. Tap play above to listen to the full podcast, or read an excerpt below.

Question 1: What’s a place where you feel like the best version of yourself?

Gael García Bernal: I grew up in the theater with my parents. It felt like when I was a kid, theater and life were very intertwined. The stage was just a step away. So in a way, I realized growing up that I was born into something special — into a world that is very unique. And the more I grew up, the more I saw the difference. There was the outside and there was inside. There was my home and there was the world. And there was a big moment in my adolescence that I didn’t want to be an actor.

Rachel Martin: Oh, is that right?

García Bernal: I was completely and absolutely reluctant to do it because that’s where I was born in a way. That’s the place that was handy for me. So I wanted the challenge of something else. And I had other curiosities with archeology or sociology or anthropology, philosophy, and I studied philosophy in the Mexican National Autonomous University. And so I tried my best to not become an actor. And it was impossible to escape it. For me, it isn’t the acting, it isn’t being on stage. It is the smell of the place. It is like a temple kind of thing. It is the place where I know that everything will be OK. There is this moment of incredible tension and excitement before going on stage, you know, before appearing. And then when you’re there, everything is amazing. Everything is just incredible. So I think I’m the best version of myself because, first of all, I don’t know who I am. So I guess the best of myself, kind of — not shines through, but that’s what we see in an actor when we look at their performances, we know they are someone else.

Martin: I had never thought about it that way, though, that it can seem counterintuitive to say I am the truest, best version of myself when I am acting. That seems like a major contradiction.

García Bernal: Yeah. I think it took me a while to come to terms and also to come at peace with that, because I was reluctant about that. I saw acting as something else when I was young and I started to find like, “Oh, this is quite an existential journey — to interpret someone. And therapeutic as well and cathartic and you can sublimate so many things.”

Question 2: What have you found surprising about getting older?

García Bernal: Now I know how to do things better, but my body’s not responding as it used to, no? So, for example, with football — I play a lot of football and I just gave up because now it hurts. And I get hurt. But I think I play better than ever because now I know where to [go and] what position to be in.

Martin: It’s so cruel.

García Bernal: Yeah, it’s so cruel. So cruel.

Gael García Bernal and Diego Luna speak at the 76th Primetime Emmy Awards in September.

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Question 3: Have your feelings about death changed over time?

García Bernal: Oh, yes, yes. It’s changed a lot. Definitely. I guess the first time for me, and must have been for many, many people as well, is becoming a father, no? Like, for example, somebody the other day was telling me, like, “Does anyone remember the name of the grandfather of your grandfather?” And I was like, “No. I don’t think no one remembers that I know.” Like, wow, it’s crazy how all these things that we’re going to build and all these structures that we fight for or try to achieve…

And so therefore, you see that transcendence is something else, no? And definitely with a baby transcendence is there, no? There is something that is there and will continue and will live and will reproduce and will be something else and you will just admire.

But it is similar to what we do in films, as well. I mean my approach to doing films — and it might sound a little bit presumptuous — but it’s like trying to do something that hopefully has some transcendence. You really want these films to kind of transcend and hopefully be seen in many, many years, because that’s who we were at that point.

Martin: So what does that transcendence mean for you? Like, if you were to be able to convey one thing that lived on after you expire. What is the thing?

García Bernal: Well, fortunately many of the things that I’ve participated in have helped amplify the dimensions of many discussions and of many conversations that had to happen in my time. These films have been emollients or catalysts of something, or have been accompanying certain issues — very interesting concepts of, “What is democracy?” For example, I recommend that film No by Pablo Larraín. We did it in Chile a few years ago and it is about the moment where they ousted Pinochet, the dictator, and it’s incredible the whole sort of anthropological game that is played there because it is a project about democracy. What is democracy, no? And I love doing that. So I wish that all these projects have transcendence that I’m able to grasp as well and to feel, but that when I’m not here anymore, they will be seen as kind of like, “Oh, these guys made their best effort. These guys really tried to do something.”

Question 4: Do you think that there is a part of people that lives on after they die?

García Bernal: Yes, I do. If I don’t enjoy — not believe — but, like, enjoy or dwell on the mystery of things, then I think I wouldn’t be an actor. Because if I had the certainty and I would be like, “I’m only about the facts,” then I would read the phone book. That would be my wonderful, kind of like, joy of reading the phone book. That is real. It’s super real.

So I love the mystery and the poetic behind all of it — but not as a believer. Mostly like that kind of enjoyment or curiosity. Nothing ends. Everything transforms. And that’s a law of physics. And I can feel it.

I mean, there are so many examples I can say, some of them are incredibly personal. But when we knew that my daughter was — that we were pregnant, my father passed away. So it was that kind of, like, tag team (laughs). Yeah.