Javier Bardem talks exclusively about working with Ridley Scott and stepping back into a world created by Cormac McCarthy

Hoping to make some quick cash for himself and fiancée Laura (Cruz), the ‘Counsellor’ (Fassbender) becomes embroiled in the treacherous drug underworld through suspicious middle man Westray (Pitt), close friend Reiner (Bardem) and Reiner’s sinister girlfriend Malkina (Diaz). Things quickly spiral out of control and the Counsellor soon realises that sin is a choice and that having it all could mean losing everything.

In this exclusive interview, Javier Bardem tells us about his character – Reiner, stepping back into a Cormac McCarthy world and what he learnt from working with legendary filmmaker Ridley Scott…

Javier, would you mind telling me who you play, what he wants in the film and what character flaws prevent him from succeeding?

I play Reiner, who is a businessman. He owns nightclubs and bars and restaurants and also he’s linked to the underworld of cartel. He’s the person who’s going to bring the Counselor into the other world. But above all he is a victim himself of the wrong choices he has made in life. So the flaw in this movie for everyone is greed.  Also, playing naive, and not wanting to see other peoples’ suffering.

This is the second time you’ve worked on a film with Cormac McCarthy and his dialogue.  How wonderful as an actor is it to use that dialogue?

It is very rich dialogue; also it is very challenging because he works at two levels. He goes into the intellectual level of it with very deep thoughts on many things and big statements about certain things. And also it’s very emotional, because it’s really dry and he goes straight to the guts kind of. So as an actor you have both covered. You have to be aware intellectually but also at the same time very organic. It’s very strong material to work with.

Do you see any parallels at all between No Country For Old Men and this film?  Perhaps in your character and in Cameron Diaz’s character, that they’re both sociopaths?

I guess I thought about it, but I guess fate, wrong decisions and consequences for those wrong decisions would be the theme or the issue that they both share. Josh Brolin in No Country got somebody else’s bag full of money and ran away. Well, then Anton Chigurh showed up saying, “That’s not good.”  Here it’s kind of people doing the same, doing things that they shouldn’t do and paying the consequences from it at times.

If you watch it more than once you can really see the dialogue and the performances.

You need to see it twice maybe because there’s so much thought into it, in the sense that McCarthy brought very strong and powerful and complex dialogues displaying certain things that I’m sure if you see it twice you are going to enjoy it even more.  That is what I like to think. It’s very complex and it will be very nice to take the time to see it twice.

What did you learn from working with Ridley?

I learned to be relaxed on a set and see a master dealing with problems and situations in a very relaxed and easy way. It’s very impressive to see how he handles that whole imagery of a movie like this. Because it’s maybe not a big action movie with many effects, but it’s a movie with actors thinking a lot and that’s also very challenging. And the way he made it happen we all felt very comfortable and very good taken care of, very well taken care of.

Have you yourself built up a new relationship with Cormac having worked on these two films?

Not really. In No Country I saw him once one day and we didn’t, he said to me only, “Funny haircut,” that’s all he said, and I didn’t know if it was a good thing or a bad thing. In this one he was every day on set. I approached to him to ask him some questions but at the end I realized that he didn’t want to answer those questions because otherwise it would have been answered in the script. So there’s a mystery that he likes to play with, and you have to be respectful of that mystery.

And he didn’t mention your hair in this film?

No. Well, he looked at me and was like, “Okay. Once again, I guess every time I see you, you have something going on in your head.”

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The Counsellor is out now on Digital HD and Blu-ray/DVD on 17 March from Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment