ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Every week, a famous guest answers a big question about their life drawn from our Wild Card deck. Gael Garcia Bernal is known for iconic roles in movies like "Y Tu Mama Tambien," "The Motorcycle Diaries" and "Coco." Now he's starring in "La Maquina," a Hulu series about an aging boxer. He talked to Wild Card host Rachel Martin about finding his home in the theater.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)
RACHEL MARTIN: One, two, or three, Gael?
GAEL GARCIA BERNAL: Let's do the - yeah, the first one I thought of, like, the one that is on my left that is on your right. Exactly, that one.
MARTIN: OK.
GARCIA BERNAL: Yes.
MARTIN: I like the specificity. What's a place where you feel like the best version of yourself?
GARCIA BERNAL: OK. So like you said in your wonderful and beautiful introduction, I grew up in the theater with my parents. Like, 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 when growing up a little bit 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 the - there was my home, and there was a big moment in my adolescence that I didn't want to be an actor. I was...
MARTIN: Oh, is that right?
GARCIA BERNAL: ...Completely - yes - and absolutely reluctant to do it because that's where I was born in a way. So I wanted the challenge of something else, and I had other curiosities with archaeology or sociology or anthropology, philosophy - 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.
MARTIN: Right. It's not pretending to be other people, actually. Yeah.
GARCIA BERNAL: 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, you know, tension and excitement before going onstage, you know, before appearing. So I think I'm the best version of myself because first of all, I don't know who I am.
MARTIN: Ah, whoa.
GARCIA BERNAL: So I guess the best of myself kind of - no - not shines through but kind of, like, is incredibly - that's what we see in an actor when we look at their performances.
MARTIN: Yeah.
GARCIA BERNAL: We know they are someone else.
MARTIN: I'd 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.
GARCIA BERNAL: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think it took me a while to come at peace with that because I was reluctant about that. I saw acting as something else, you know, when I was young. And I started to find, like, oh, this is quite an existential journey to interpret...
MARTIN: Right.
GARCIA BERNAL: ...You know, someone and to be - and therapeutical (ph) as well and cathartic and - yeah.
MARTIN: Yeah.
GARCIA BERNAL: And you can sublimate so many things.
MARTIN: Right.
SHAPIRO: That's actor Gael Garcia Bernal talking to NPR's Rachel Martin. For more from that conversation, follow the Wild Card podcast. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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