Cinema Experts

"I'm an actor. I don't need to abide by any ethnicity."
García Bernal was born in Guadalajara, Jalisco, the son of Patricia Bernal, an actress and former model, and José Angel García, an actor and director. His stepfather is Sergio Yazbek, to whom his mother married when García Bernal was young. He started acting at just a year old and spent most of his teen years starring in soap operas. When he was fourteen, he taught literacy to indigenous peoples in Mexico, most often with the Huichol Indians. In his later teens he took part in peaceful demonstrations during the Chiapas uprising of 1994.
García Bernal was becoming a soap opera heartthrob, but at age 19, he left Mexico's television world to study acting at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London, becoming the first person from Mexico to be accepted in the program, and take the journey. Subsequently, García Bernal has starred in some of Mexico's most celebrated recent films, beginning with Amores Perros (2000), then 2001's Y tu mamá también, and El crimen del Padre Amaro (2002). He has also done some theatre work, including a 2005 production of Bodas de Sangre, by Federico García Lorca, in the Almeida Theatre in London. However, it was his debut as a working-class street thug in the Oscar-nominated Amores Perros that first grabbed Hollywood's attention.
García Bernal also portrayed Argentine-born physician turned Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara twice, first in the 2002 TV miniseries Fidel and then, better known, in 2004's The Motorcycle Diaries, an adaptation of a journal a 23-year-old Guevara wrote about his travels across South America. García Bernal has worked for acclaimed directors like Pedro Almodóvar, Walter Salles, Alfonso Cuarón, Alejandro González Iñárritu and Michel Gondry, among others. He has recently taken on roles in English language films, including the Gondry-directed The Science of Sleep, the Alejandro González Iñárritu-directed Babel, and The King, for which he has earned rave reviews. He has been nominated for a BAFTA in 2005 for Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role for The Motorcycle Diaries and, in 2006, was nominated for the Orange Rising Star award which acknowledges new talents in the acting industry.
García Bernal has also directed his first feature film, Déficit, which is scheduled for release in 2007.
García Bernal is also featured on the upcoming Devendra Banhart record Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon, contributing vocals on the first track entitled "Cristobal".