BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — Javier Bardem sounds almost as happy as he was the night he won the Best Supporting Actor Academy Award for "No Country for Old Men" in 2008. No wonder. He is recently married, to fellow Spaniard and Oscar-winner Penelope Cruz — his memorable costar in Woody Allen's "Vicky Cristina Barcelona" — and he's costarring opposite No. 1 box-office actress Julia Roberts in "Eat Pray Love," the highly-publicized movie of the No. 1 best-selling 2006 memoir.

Asked how it feels to join the roster of Roberts' leading men such as Richard Gere and Hugh Grant, Bardem says, "Who? Hugh . . . Oh, yes, him. Oh, how does it feel? Yes, wonderful! They make me the offer, I have to wait a few seconds before I say 'yes.' I didn't shout, 'Si, si, si, claro que si, hombre!' ('Yes, yes, yes, of course yes, man') — but that's how I felt."

In Spain, Bardem has been a leading man for a long time. In Hollywood, he's still making his mark, although he was Oscar-nominated for Best Actor for "Before Night Falls" (2000) as a gay Cuban writer. And he won international acclaim for another lead role based on a real person, Ramon Sampedro — a quadriplegic who campaigned for assisted suicide — in "The Sea Inside" (2004); he played Sampedro at 55, even though Bardem was in his 30s (he was born in the Canary Islands in 1969).