Quotes from Gael Garcia Bernal

I was little there were times I wanted my parents to be normal. I wanted them to have a religion. I wanted them to have a job, like the parents of every other kid I went to school with.

Democracy should be practiced not every six years, but every day.

Let's not give the electoral process so much importance. We have to be cynical about it. Let's give importance to the real democracy that's constructed on a day-to-day basis. That's my hopeful perspective on it.

I always wanted to act, but I never thought it would be my profession. I thought that I'd end up doing other things, but that in the meantime I'd do plays.

In Mexico you have death very close. That's true for all human beings because it's a part of life, but in Mexico, death can be found in many things.

Texas is a country in its own. It's made up of half Mexico/half United States but completed mixed. I don't mean to draw a generalization but it is a place, a territory, that's really made up of all these encounters, you know?

The type of music we know as classical music began with rich people hiring musicians or owning them in a way. Without funding, it's very hard to have this experience. Be it state money or private money, there has to be someone dedicated to raising the money.

I don't know, a lot of people go crazy about 'Breaking Bad,' but I don't like the soap opera aspect of it and only following one character. I like the context to all of it, all the pieces, like 'The Wire.' It's more about the state of things; it's not about the narrative of a person.

When it's good, cinema can be one of the most important things in a person's life. A film can be a catalyst for change. You witness this and it is an incredibly spiritual experience that I'd never lived before; well, maybe only in a football match.

It's difficult to act in a language that's not your own. It takes a long time to put your head around it and feel confident with it.

Recently I've been doing risottos. Some of them have been amazing. Some of them, not all of them.

I asked the producers when I was doing 'Y Tu Mama Tambien' if they could give me a VHS recording of the film that I could show to my family, because in Mexico and Latin America, when you do a film, you don't expect anybody to see it, especially not in the cinema.

My parents separated when I was very small. I grew up with my mother, and I was a single child then. She was very independent, doing her things and having fun alone and working.

A boxing workout is the heaviest thing, but it's the best. The worst part is that boxing gyms are the smelliest things in the universe. You have to lie down on the floor, where everyone has been sweating and spitting, and do 1,000 situps and push-ups.

There is something about the live performance of an orchestra that makes it very different to a film. With a film, you can rewrite it in a way with the material you have, and in rehearsals, you're really trying out different things. In an orchestra, you can't do that. They separate as soon as the performance factor comes into play.

In Mexico, audiences want to see a big discussion around a film - what we expect from Hollywood films worldwide is more of an entertaining show. 'Y Tu Mama Tambien' was a road movie and comedy, but it had a very strong political connotation that sparked a discussion in Mexico that is still going on.

HeyHey is my favourite app. It's like Instagram but for sound recordings, with little soundbites from people's days. We spend far too much time looking down at our phones, so it's nice to have your head up while you listen to what other people have uploaded.

A person isn't born with the intelligence to be with someone especial, you learn it, and you fail in the path of life, but you don't have to give up the chance to love.

Los Cabos has been an amalgam of many cultures that have been coming here. There have been beautiful Jesuit missions for example, in many places around this area. The towns are incredible. But there is a very strong Mexicanized culture here that exists because people from different parts of Mexico have come to live here.

My love is for acting not money, so I only take on roles that I find challenging, in stories I find interesting.

Comedy requires a lot of energy.

As actors, we don't shy away from saying, 'I wanted to be an actor because I wanted to meet girls.' Directors cannot say the same thing.

The concept of monogamy is an inheritance of a medieval time, when family would carry the tradition of the name and certain privileges. It's a way of organizing society, perhaps.

The collective experience of watching a great film together in a room is a transcendent moment that will never die.