Gael Garcia Bernal biography
Date of birth : 1978-11-30
Date of death : -
Birthplace : Guadalajara, Mexico
Nationality : Mexican
Category : Arts and Entertainment
Last modified : 2011-08-26
Credited as : Actor, film director,
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García Bernal was born in Guadalajara, Mexico, the son of Patricia Bernal, an actress and former model, and José Angel García, an actor and director. His stepfather is Sergio Yazbek, 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 telenovelas. Gael studied the International Baccalaureate, with chemistry being unquestionably his favorite subject. When he was fourteen, he taught indigenous peoples in Mexico to read, often working with the Huichol Indians. In his later teens, he took part in peaceful demonstrations during the Chiapas uprising of 1994.
He was raised by his mother and stepfather, the photographer Sergio Yazbek. García Bernal studied at The Edron Academy in Mexico City. García Bernal's parents participated in an annual clown competition which inspired García Bernal as a young child to become the actor he is today.
García Bernal is "culturally Catholic" and "spiritually agnostic". He speaks fluent Spanish and English; and Portuguese, French and Italian to some degree.
On Thursday January 8, 2009, his girlfriend, Argentine actress Dolores Fonzi gave birth to a son Lázaro in Madrid, Spain. Their daughter Libertad was born on April 4, 2011 in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Gael Garcia Bernal has been acting since early childhood. He began performing in stage productions with his parents in Guadalajara, Mexico, and later studied at acting at school. He was on the path to becoming a soap opera heartthrob, before he decided, at age 19, to leave Mexico's television world to study acting at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London. Bernal appeared in several plays, soap operas, and short films before his major feature film debut in Alejandro González Iñárritu's Amores Perros.
It's hard to think of a more appealing young actor than the enormously talented Gael Garcia Bernal. He got his start working with Mexican filmmakers Alejandro González Iñárritu in Amores Perros (2001) and Alfonso Cuarón in Y Tu Mama Tambien. Since then, Bernal has worked consistently in a variety of fine film, with a wide pool of international filmmakers including Michel Gondrey, Walter Salles, Pedro Almodovar, Jim Jarmusch and Lukas Moodysson.
García Bernal has portrayed Argentine-born physician turned Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara twice, first in the 2002 TV miniseries Fidel and then in Walter Salles wonderful film The Motorcyle Diaires (2004), about Guevara's adventures as a young man traveling across South America.
The talented actor has also begun to take on roles in English language films, including the Michel Gondry's whimsical The Science of Sleep (2006), Babel, Bernal's second film with Alejandro González Iñárritu (2006), and James Marsh's The King (2006).
García Bernal also directed his first feature film, Déficit, which was released in Mexico in 2007. He will next be seen in Fernando Meirelles' Blindness which opened the Cannes Film Festival, Jim Jarmusch's The Limites of Control and Lukas Moodysson's Mammoth.
Filmography:
2009 Mammoth Leo Vidales
2009 The Limits of Control
2009 8 - 'The Letter'
2010 Letters to Juliet
2010 Even the Rain
2010 José and Pilar Self Doc about José Saramago (Nobel Prize in Literature, 1998)
2011 A Little Bit of Heaven
2011 Casa de Mi Padre
