The Sea Inside

Javier Bardem: Couch Potato

Javier Bardem confesses that he spent the first few months of 2004 lying on his couch. The Oscar-nominated actor wasn't goofing off watching Golden Girls repeats, though — he was preparing for his role as a quadriplegic in his latest critically-acclaimed film, The Sea Inside."I would lie still on the sofa trying talk to myself and going through different emotional states," Bardem explains. "And then I realized that it wasn't working — I was moving like a maniac. So I would put a camera on myself and say some monologues. I would do that for several hours every day. Then, during the shooting, I had five hours of makeup, plus 10 hours of shooting. So that was 15 hours a day in bed, plus the hour I spent in my bed at home sleeping." That may sound like more of a vacation than a job, but the mood on the set wasn't particularly lighthearted, due to the story Sea tells. Based on a true story, it follows Ramon Sampedro, a quadriple