Javier Bardem: Sinister? Me?

Javier Bardem has a face that was made for Bond villainy: buggy eyes, crooked nose, full lips… And that's before you get to his hair. As the killer Anton Chigurh in No Country For Old Men, he established a useful link between psychopathy and the side parting. Now, as Raoul Silva, 007's nemesis in the new movie, Skyfall, the actor looks as if an albino polecat is draped across his head.

Bardem is back to normal brown hair today, a large presence in a London hotel room, with a slight look of Depardieu about him; jolie laide, if that term was ever used for a man. After these kinds of roles, I wonder if it's possible that the actor finds himself sinister. "Every time I wake up," Bardem replies, and laughs loudly. "I look at myself in the mirror to brush my teeth and it's very sinister. Ugh, look at that nose; look at those eyes. Ugh, my tone of voice." Of course, a movie star married to Penélope Cruz can afford to talk this way without fear of being taken at his word. But still; Bardem's casual self-mockery makes him seem a very European kind of actor, away from the worst narcissism of his profession.

Which he is. The 43-year-old and Cruz live in Madrid where, when he isn't acting, Bardem runs a bar with his sister. He calls flying to LA "going to the office" and tries to stay out of Hollywood as much as possible. The couple have a one-year-old child, and Bardem is resolute in not talking about it. He grew up in a family of actors, but not in a glamorous way – most of his family, including his mother, were poor, frequently out of work and struggled to make ends meet. As a result, Bardem is a pragmatist. "You want to do your job well so that people in the future say, 'OK, he's not bad, let's hire him.'"

Being hired for the Bond movie was a big deal, even though he'd been offered parts in previous films in the franchise. This time, the confluence of a good script and Sam Mendes as director persuaded him to say yes. The morning before we meet, a group of disgruntled journalists are dragged into Soho during rush hour for a three‑minute showreel and a lot of self‑important Bond fanfare. But the scenes are great – mostly Judi Dench, it has to be said, who when she hisses to Bond, "Where the hell have you been?" delivers a frisson of pure, exhilarating Englishness.

Well, Bardem says, imagine what it's like to experience that in the flesh and then have to act opposite it. Appearing in scenes with Dench was, he says, like standing in front of a water cannon. "When she opens her mouth and looks you in the eyes, you're like, 'Wow! This is a big deal.' You feel a force of nature against your chest."

There was a point during filming when Bardem appeared in a scene with both Dench and Daniel Craig. "And I looked at them both and forgot the lines. There was a silence and Sam said, 'Cut, what's wrong?' And I said, 'I'm sorry, man, I just realised I'm in a James Bond movie and M and James Bond are looking at me.'"

These kind of moments have more resonance, Bardem says, because of his relatively long apprenticeship – he hadn't made a big-budget Hollywood movie until Eat Pray Love in 2010 – and the constant reminder from family and friends that not everyone is in his favoured position. Living in Spain is a fairly sobering experience these days. Bardem is not theatrically political in the Sean Penn style, but is solidly engaged in the fate of his country. He was born in 1969, "when Franco was still alive". His mother belonged to a leftwing movement and had some problems with the regime, as did his uncle, he says, who spent time in jail for his political opposition. "It was a very troubled time, to the point that to have the surname Bardem in those times was not good; you were pursued and put in jail. I was too little, but I saw things. People being arrested, my mother crying because colleagues of hers and people she loved were imprisoned or disappeared. The streets were violent."

Now, he says, there are demonstrations every other day in Spain. "Different issues, but all connected to the same problem, which is, 'We are not stupid.'"

What does he mean? "The whole situation is crazy in that there is 50% unemployment in people under 30. There is a lot of emigration. I am very proud of my country for many things, but one of them is how politically involved the society is. The gap between politicians and societies is getting bigger and bigger and bigger, and the more awareness there is, the more consciousness of who is responsible and how they should pay for it – what they should do to fix this situation – the less the politicians listen. There was a moment when there was a kind of interaction between politicians and society, now there is not. They're like a unique class of people, the politicians. Along with the bankers."

It's hard to imagine him getting very far with that speech in LA, but Bardem seems to have relatively little interest in promoting himself as an A-list movie star. He was up against Russell Crowe in the best actor category at the Oscars 12 years ago, for his role in Before Night Falls, and won Best Supporting Actor in 2007 for No Country For Old Men, but most of his best work has been in Spanish, in films such as Jamón Jamón and Biutiful. He was famous relatively young in Spain – he made Jamón Jamón in his early 20s – and has said that he quit rugby (he played for the Spanish underage national team) because his high profile made him a target for extra kicking, although now, he says, "That's not why I retired from rugby. I retired from rugby because I was old and getting really slow."

Anyway, that's Europe-famous. Hollywood-famous is something else entirely, and Bardem has come to that quite late. He's grateful to have avoided the worst aspects of the rat race, "people too anxious about how the world is going to perceive them and to be on top of somebody else. And it's like, calm down, relax. These are not people who know who they are."

This isn't confined to actors, of course. "It's also a rule of the world. When you know people are really at peace with who they are and what they do, they collaborate and want to help you to improve. It's people who try to suck you in like a vampire that make you feel like, what's going on?"

This detachment is helped, he says, by speaking English as a second language; it forces him to put things more simply and to be "more conscious of my limitations". I wonder when he feels most Spanish – what the cultural triggers are, such as when Brits go abroad and can't cope with people queue-jumping.

"Oh, well, Spanish people are the ones jumping the queue. In Spain, they will kill you for that. In Britain they will say, 'Eh?'"

He feels his nationality most keenly in America, because it gives him somewhere to retreat to if things go wrong. "That's the background you have, to be able to think, it's OK, let's try, let's see. It gives you freedom and peace. If it's great, great, and if it's not, it's not. There is no middle ground in Hollywood; you're a failure or you're a success. That mentality is wild."

It's pretty easy to be Zen about success from the vantage point of someone who has it, no? Would he be this cool if he was a failure? "No, I wouldn't have been able to say that, I'm sure. The question is not that one, though. The question is, is it in your nature to sacrifice almost everything in order to make it?"

Is it in his nature?

"No. No."

When stars talk of what they "sacrificed" to be successful, it makes Bardem cringe. What a superficial definition of sacrifice, he says, returning to his mother's struggle to raise three children alone, while having some kind of professional fulfilment, or his wider family of actors, finding ways to continue when no one would hire them.

"Sacrifice to me has a different meaning. The background – your own history – is way more important than what you can achieve as a professional. My mother is an actress; my grandfather and grandmother were actors. The parents of my grandparents were actors, in a time when actors were not allowed to be buried on sacred land. Terrible. My uncle is an actor, my brother is an actor and a writer, my sister used to be an actress. My cousins are actors. I've seen since I was born all that you can imagine in an actor's life. So I don't buy anything. I don't buy success. I don't buy failure. I only buy commitment."

Even winning an Oscar didn't much move him on this score. "Great honour, great privilege. I accept it, I get very emotional about it. Thank you. Next… Or they give you the worst review ever. I've had many of those where they go, 'Javier Bardem sucks.' You say, ugh, I'm sorry, I wish I could do it better. I'll try. Thank you. Next…"

His mother took second jobs. "She cleaned stairs. Worked in a bingo hall. Many other things." But as a child, Bardem watched how low she got when she couldn't find an acting job. "As an actor, it has something to do with the skin. That is why we're so insecure. When we do what we do, we expose ourselves, and when they review us, in a way, what they're saying is we like you or we don't."

At this point, I try awkwardly to twist the conversation around to Bardem's present family life and he reminds me that he never talks about it, other than to concede that having a child has reminded him how great his own mother was. Then he brings up the Madrid bars he owns with his sister and asks me to mention their names, for publicity.

On one condition, I say; that you answer a question about Penélope.

"OK."

Um. Oh. Er. While he was filming Bond, was she repelled by his hair? (Sorry; best I could do in a moment of brain freeze.)

"She was fine. She's an actress. She understands. You don't bring your character home. You learn to hang it on the door. Which sounds very logical, but it's not. When we did Biutiful – five months every day, six days a week, 14 hours a day – how in the world does the actor go home and be himself? That's why Daniel, after doing Bond for seven months – it's not that he thinks he's James Bond, he's cleverer than that – but of course there is something that gets confusing. If you go to a party and you go dressed as a banana and everyone else is dressed as something else, by the end of the night, you think you're a banana. Everyone treats you like one."

(The two bars are called La Bardemcilla – one is in Chueca, the other in Santa Ana.)

So. Bardem is at that stage, he says, when he is arriving at some plateau of self-knowledge, which is to say: "When you're too young, you think you know everything. You don't know shit. Now I know enough to know that I don't know anything."

He does such a good psychopath, you wonder what corner of his character he pulls it out from. It's a question of going back in your mind, he says, to when you've felt murderous rage, as everyone has, and just drawing it out. That's the fun part of his job – emotional tourism. "Getting out of yourself for a little while, seeing the world through different eyes and" – with the sanity that lets him stray so convincingly into insanity – "coming back with less judgments."