My Oscar Book

Nearly two decades later, he’s proved again he could convincingly play a sociopath, reimagining the vengeful murderer Max Cady on the hit summer series Cape Fear.

Cady was previously played by Robert Mitchum in 1962 and De Niro in 1991, but the brilliance of Bardem’s performance lies in his perceived stillness. It heightened the tension of the cat-and-mouse game he plays with the Bowden family, which star Lily Collias described as “lot of fun” but “very jarring.”

“We’re playing cat and mouse, and then the cameras turn off, and I still feel like a mouse,” Collias told Variety at the “Cape Fear” finale screening in New York. “And he still feels like Tom from ‘Tom and Jerry.’”

Collias plays Natalie Bowden, the daughter of Anna (Amy Adams) and Tom (Patrick Wilson), two lawyers who Bardem’s Cady blames for his incarceration. After 10 episodes of buildup, the series finale depicts a in which Cady invades the Bowden’s home, placing Anna and Tom on “trial” for colluding against him and threatening their children.

Before filming one violent sequence in which Cady grabs Natalie by the hair, Collias says Bardem politely apologized in advance and made sure she felt comfortable with the physicality.

“We would go through such weird circumstances, it’s little things that make me still giggle to this day,” Collias said. “In Episode 10, there’s one point where he has to grab me by my hair, and before the scene, he’s like, ‘I’m so sorry, my love. Is it OK if I just — I’m going to grab you like that?’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, that’s fine.’ Then we start rolling and I see this thing coming up to me and I’m like, ‘What the fuck?! Well, OK, that’s your job!’”

When asked about filming the intense finale scenes, Bardem smirked, explaining how he’s learned to lean into the “play” involved with acting as he’s gotten older.