Favorite Birthday Boy for Nov 30th

Gael Garcia Bernal
From:  Favorite Hunks & Other Things

 Actor Gael Garcia Bernal turns 38 today.

Gael García Bernal (Spanish pronunciation: [ɡaˈel ɣaɾˈsi.a βeɾˈnal]; born November 30, 1978) is a Mexican film actor and director.

García Bernal was born in Guadalajara, Mexico, the son of Patricia Bernal, an actress and former model, and José Ángel 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 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 a part in peaceful demonstrations during the Chiapas uprising of 1994.

García Bernal was becoming a soap opera heartthrob, but at age of 19, he left Mexico's television world to study acting at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London, becoming the first person from Mexico to be accepted into the program. In the brief period beforehand, he had begun to study philosophy at UNAM, Mexico's national university, before a strike closed the college and he then left for London. Describing his time in London as 'life forming', he considered acting merely an 'odd job profession' until the Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu offered him a part in Amores Perros. Subsequently, García Bernal starred in some of Mexico's most celebrated recent films, including 2001's Y tu mamá también, and El crimen del Padre Amaro (2002). He has also done some theatre work, including a 2005 production of Bodas de Sangre, by Federico García Lorca, in the Almeida Theatre in London. His debut as a working-class dreamer in the Oscar-nominated Amores Perros, however, was what first grabbed Hollywood's attention.

García Bernal also portrayed Argentine revolutionary Che Guevara twice, first in the 2002 TV miniseries Fidel and then, better known, in 2004's The Motorcycle Diaries, an adaptation of a journal a 23-year-old Guevara wrote about his travels across South America. García Bernal has worked for acclaimed directors including Pedro Almodóvar, Walter Salles, Alfonso Cuarón, Alejandro González Iñárritu and Michel Gondry, among others. He recently took on roles in English language films, including the Gondry-directed The Science of Sleep, the Alejandro González Iñárritu-directed Babel, and The King, for which he earned rave reviews. He has been nominated for a BAFTA in 2005 for Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role for The Motorcycle Diaries and, in 2006, was nominated for the Orange Rising Star award which acknowledges new talents in the acting industry.

 García Bernal also directed his first feature film, Déficit, which was released in 2007. García Bernal is also featured on the 2007 Devendra Banhart album Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon, contributing vocals on the first track entitled "Cristobal." Bernal was cast for the 2008 film Blindness, an adaptation of the 1995 novel of the same name by José Saramago about a society suffering an epidemic of blindness. Like in the novel, the characters have only descriptions, no names or histories; while director Fernando Meirelles said some actors were intimidated by the concept of playing such characters, "With Gael, he said, 'I never think about the past. I just think what my character wants.'" García Bernal starred in Rudo y Cursi with Diego Luna, directed by Carlos Cuarón.

García Bernal and Diego Luna own Canana Productions. The company recently joined with Golden Phoenix Productions to jointly produce a number of television documentaries about the unsolved murders of more than 300 women in the border city of Ciudad Juarez, across from El Paso, Texas.

In May 2010, García Bernal did a cameo appearance as himself, playing Cristiano Ronaldo in Ronaldo: The Movie for Nike advertisement "Write The Future".

In 2010, he co-directed with Marc Siver four short films in collaboration with Amnesty International. This tetralogy is called "Los Invisibles" about migrants from Central America in Mexico, their journey, the violence imposed, their hopes and what they can contribute to Mexico, the US and the world. He directed the movies, did the interviews and also is the narrator of the four short movies.

García Bernal narrated Human Planet for Hispanic audiences, which premiered on Discovery en Español on April 25, 2011 and aired on Discovery Channel in Latin America on May 12. For the third time García Bernal appeared with Diego Luna in the American Spanish-language comedy film Casa de Mi Padre opposite Will Ferrell where he played a feared drug lord. García Bernal's next projects include a film adaptation of José Agustín's Ciudades Desiertas and the biopic Rosewater. He is also slated to star in the 20th Century Fox reboot Zorro film called Zorro Reborn. The script is by Glen Gers, Lee Shipman, and Brian McGeevy.

 García Bernal speaks fluent Spanish, English, Portuguese and French. He is also able to speak Italian to some degree.

Gael García Bernal has been with his wife, Argentine actress Dolores Fonzi, since 2008. They met on the set of "Vidas privadas", in 2001 and married in 2009. On Thursday January 8, 2009, their son Lázaro was born in Madrid, Spain. Their daughter Libertad was born on April 4, 2011 in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Gael García Bernal helped to create the organization and film festival Ambulante A.C. which works to bring documentary films to places where they are rarely shown, and helped to create the Amnesty International Short Documentary Series Los Invisibles. For this work, he was awarded the Washington Office on Latin America's Human Rights Award in 2011.

He has described himself as "culturally Catholic but spiritually Agnostic".

 In 2008, Gael García Bernal was honored with the Excellence in Acting Award at the Provincetown International Film Festival. And at the 2012 Abu Dhabi Film Festival, Gael García Bernal won the award for Best Actor.