Gael García Bernal (Spanish: [ɡaˈel ɣaɾˈsi.a βeɾˈnal]; born 30 November 1978) is a Mexican actor and filmmaker. He has received various accolades including a Golden Globe Award and an Ariel Award. He is known for his performances in the films Amores perros (2000), Y tu mamá también (2001), Bad Education (2004), The Motorcycle Diaries (2004), Babel (2006), Coco (2017), Old (2021), Cassandro (2023) and Magellan (2025).
On television, he portrayed music conductor Rodrigo De Souza in the series Mozart in the Jungle (2014–2018) and Shakespearian actor Arthur Leander in the miniseries Station Eleven (2021–2022), and starred as the titular character in the Disney+ Marvel Studios Special Presentation Werewolf by Night (2022). He is set to produce and star in the upcoming series The Boys: Mexico for The Boys franchise along with Diego Luna.
García Bernal was nominated for a BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role for his portrayal of a young Che Guevara in The Motorcycle Diaries in 2005, and in 2016 won his first Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Television Series Musical or Comedy for Mozart in the Jungle. He and fellow actor Diego Luna founded the production company Canana Films in Mexico City. In 2016, Time magazine named him in the annual Time 100 most influential people list. In 2020, The New York Times ranked him No. 25 in its list of the 25 Greatest Actors of the 21st Century.
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Early life
García Bernal was born in Guadalajara, Jalisco, 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 one year old and spent most of his teen years starring in telenovelas. García Bernal and frequent collaborator Diego Luna were friends from childhood in Mexico City.
When he was fourteen, García Bernal taught indigenous people in Mexico to read, often working with the Huichol people. At the age of fifteen, he took part in peaceful demonstrations in support of the Zapatista uprising of 1994.
He began studying philosophy at UNAM, Mexico's national university but, during a prolonged student strike, he decided to take a sabbatical to travel around Europe. He then moved to London, and became the first Mexican accepted to study at the Central School of Speech and Drama. Bernal also attended the European Graduate School toward a master's in media and communication.
Career
After García Bernal's success in soap operas, Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu offered García Bernal a part in his feature directorial debut, Amores perros (2000). The film won rave reviews, and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.
His next role was Alfonso Cuarón's Y tu mamá también (2001), which was a crossover success into American markets and gained him notice on the international stage, becoming the second-highest grossing Spanish language film in the United States. The next year, García Bernal went on to portray Argentine revolutionary Che Guevara in the 2002 TV miniseries Fidel and the morally troubled Father Amaro in the Mexican box-office record-breaker El crimen del Padre Amaro (2002). García Bernal again portrayed Che Guevara in The Motorcycle Diaries (2004), an adaptation of a journal the 23-year-old Guevara wrote about his travels across South America. The film broke the box office record set 3 years prior by Y tu mamá también, and garnered Bernal a BAFTA nomination in 2005 for Best Performance by an Actor.
He also did some theatre work, during this time, including a 2005 production of Bodas de Sangre, by Federico García Lorca, in the Almeida Theatre in London. García Bernal has worked for acclaimed directors including González Iñárritu, Pedro Almodóvar, Walter Salles, Alfonso Cuarón, Michel Gondry, and Iciar Bollaín, among others. He has taken on roles in English-language films, including the Gondry-directed The Science of Sleep and The King, for which he earned rave reviews.
García Bernal directed his first feature film, Déficit which was released in 2007. He was cast in 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. As 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 again paired with Diego Luna in Rudo y Cursi directed by Carlos Cuarón.
García Bernal and Diego Luna own Canana Films. 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. 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.
Personal life
García Bernal and Argentine actress Dolores Fonzi met on the set of Private Lives in 2001. On 8 January 2009 their son was born in Madrid, Spain. Their daughter was born on 4 April 2011 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. As of 2015 he divides his time between Buenos Aires and Mexico City.
He has been in a relationship with Mexican journalist Fernanda Aragonés since 2019. They had a child on 30 September 2021.
He has described himself as "culturally Catholic but spiritually agnostic".
Filmography
Awards
Ariel Award
BAFTA Awards
Cannes Film Festival
Golden Globe Awards
Goya Awards
Other honors
In January 2026 he was appointed as Officer of the French Legion of Honor by the French Government.
