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50 facts about Mexican actor Gael García Bernal.
1. He is Mexican.
2. Gael García Bernal is a film actor, director, and producer.
3. Founded Canana Films in Mexico City.
4. Gael García Bernal was born in Guadalajara, Mexico.
5. His mother Patricia Bernal is an actress and former model.
6. His father José ángel García is an actor and director.
7. His stepfather is Sergio Yazbek, whom his mother married when García Bernal was young.
8. He started acting at just a year old.
9. Spent most of his teen years starring in telenovelas.
10. Garcia studied the International Baccalaureate, with chemistry being his favorite subject.
11. When he was fourteen, he taught indigenous peoples in Mexico to read, often working with the Huichol Indians.
12. In his later teens, he took part in peaceful demonstrations during the Chiapas uprising of 1994.
13. García Bernal was becoming a soap opera heartthrob.
14. At age 19, he left Mexico's television world to study acting at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London, the first person from Mexico to be accepted into the program.
15. He had begun to study philosophy at UNAM, Mexico's national university, before a strike closed the college and he left for London.
16. Describing his time in London as 'life forming', he considered acting simply an 'odd job profession' until the Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu offered him a part in Amores Perros.
17. His debut as a working-class dreamer in the Oscar-nominated Amores Perros was what first grabbed Hollywood's attention.
18. García Bernal starred in some of Mexico's most celebrated recent films, including 2001's Y tu mamá también, El crimen del Padre Amaro.
19. 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.
20. García Bernal also portrayed Argentine revolutionary Che Guevara twice, first in the 2002 TV miniseries Fidel and then, better known, in The Motorcycle Diaries, an adaptation of a journal the 23-year-old Guevara wrote about his travels across South America.
21. García Bernal has worked for acclaimed directors including Pedro Almodóvar, Walter Salles, Alfonso Cuarón, Alejandro González Iñárritu, Michel Gondry, and Iciar Baillin, among others.
22. He has taken on roles in English-language films, including the Gondry-directed The Science of Sleep, the Alejandro González Iñárritu's Babel, and The King, for which he earned rave reviews.
23. He was nominated for a BAFTA in 2005 for Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role for The Motorcycle Diaries.
24. In 2006 was nominated for the Orange Rising Star award, which acknowledges new talents in the acting industry.
25. In 2007 he was also a member of the jury of the 57th Berlin International Film Festival.
26. García Bernal directed his first feature film, Déficit in 2007.
27. He is also a musician.
28. Pursuing musical interests, García Bernal is also featured on the 2007 Devendra Banhart album Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon, contributing vocals on the first track entitled "Cristobal."
29. Bernal was cast for the 2008 film Blindness, an adaptation of the 1995 novel of the same name by José Saramago, winner of the Nobel Prize, about a society suffering an epidemic of blindness.
30. García Bernal again paired with Diego Luna in Rudo y Cursi with , directed by Carlos Cuarón.
31. García Bernal and Diego Luna own Canana Productions. The company recently joined with Golden Phoenix Productions to produce a number of television documentaries about the unsolved murders of more than 300 women in the border city of Ciudad Juarez.
32. In May 2010, García Bernal did a cameo appearance as himself, playing Cristiano Ronaldo in Ronaldo: The Movie for the Nike advertisement, "Write The Future".
33. 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 and risks, their hopes, and what they can contribute to Mexico, the US and the world. He directed the movies, did the interviews and also narrates the four short movies.
34. 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.
35. García Bernal's next projects include a film adaptation of José Agustín's Ciudades Desiertas and the Jon Stewart directorial biopic Rosewater, in which he portrayed Maziar Bahari to widespread critical acclaim.
36. He starred in the 20th Century Fox reboot Zorro film called Zorro Reborn. The script is by Glen Gers, Lee Shipman, and Brian McGeevy.
37. In April 2014, he was announced as a member of the main competition jury at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival.
38. In June 2014, he began production as the star of the dramatic comedy "Zoom," directed by Pedro Morelli.
39. His performance in the show Mozart in the Jungle was met with rave reviews, earning him a Golden Globe Award nomination in 2015.
40. Gael García Bernal was with his partner, Argentine actress Dolores Fonzi, from 2008 to 2014.
41. Bernal and Fonzi met on the set of "Vidas privadas" in 2001.
42. On Thursday January 8, 2009, their son Lázaro was born in Madrid, Spain.
43. Their daughter Libertad was born on April 4, 2011 in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
44. The couple ended their relationship in September 2014.
45. 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.
46. For this work, he was awarded the Washington Office on Latin America's Human Rights Award in 2011.
47. He has described himself as "culturally Catholic but spiritually Agnostic".
48. In 2008, Gael García Bernal was honored with the Excellence in Acting Award at the Provincetown International Film Festival.
49. At the 2012 Abu Dhabi Film Festival, Gael García Bernal won the award for Best Actor.
50. He also won the Dinosour Award in Ganovia along with Brad Pitt in for their movie, Babel.
