Javier Bardem on Defending Palestine and Loving Penelope Cruz

Talking to Bardem is not unlike talking to another parent at school dropoff in Brooklyn; his concerns, beyond what film to make next, are similar to my own. Bardem’s 15-year-old “got his first phone less than a year ago. No social media, of course,” he says. “They work with computers at school, which we are OK with and not OK with.” What Bardem and Cruz hope for, the actor says, is that their children learn to sit with themselves, and they’ve tried to teach them to meditate. “We try to make them understand the importance of being bored, of wasting your time, of sitting down and looking at the ceiling.” This refusal to be distracted is where creativity originates. “The younger generation has less patience, less attention, less care in detail,” he says. “We are all living on a fast pace, and it takes a lot of courage to take the time to sit down and enjoy something for what it is, without thinking you are missing something else. It’s what we are consuming on a daily basis through our phones — and this attention deficit we are all having.”