How AC/DC’s Highway to Hell Turned Javier Bardem Into a Lifelong Metalhead
Hollywood has no shortage of actors who quietly claim rock or metal credentials, but few wear the badge as openly or as sincerely as Javier Bardem. The Spanish star, currently terrifying audiences as Max Cady in Apple TV’s remake of Cape Fear and still earning praise for his work in Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another, recently confirmed what longtime observers already suspected: AC/DC’s 1979 album Highway to Hell did not just introduce him to hard rock. It rewired him for life.
During an appearance on the popular online series Subway Takes, Bardem delivered a straightforward hot take. Hard rock and metal, he insisted, are the best music genres, complete with the best fans and the best audiences. Host Kareem Rahma immediately agreed. What followed was less a celebrity name-drop and more a genuine origin story. Bardem, now 57, explained that he has been a dedicated “headbanger” since the 1980s and that the music still gives him both energy and an unexpected sense of calm. “It’s a really great energizing music that puts you… puts me in my place, like helps me also to relax, whether you believe it or not,” he said.
The turning point arrived when he was just ten years old. His older brother Carlos, also an actor, brought home a copy of Highway to Hell. The moment the title track’s iconic riff hit, everything changed. Bardem has described the experience in nearly identical terms across multiple interviews spanning more than two decades. “I was 10. And the moment that I heard [sings the riff] my life changed. That moment, I was like, this is what I want to listen to for the rest of my life.” In a more reflective telling, he once called it the end of childhood and the beginning of manhood. His brother eventually moved on. Bardem did not.
From that single album he worked backward and forward through the classic hard rock and early metal catalogues. Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin came next. Then the rest of the foundational acts that defined the era. The obsession never faded. Decades later he still speaks about metal as a way of living rather than a phase. He has said he listens to Slipknot to fall asleep. He has attended shows alone when friends could not make it. A clip of him enthusiastically headbanging at a Judas Priest concert in Madrid went viral precisely because it looked so uncalculated. He later explained that his friends all had parenting duties that night, so he simply went by himself and enjoyed the night in the crowd.
That sense of belonging is something Bardem returns to often. Metal, he argues, creates a genuine brotherhood. Fans recognize one another and largely leave each other alone to experience the music. He has described standing in the pit at an AC/DC show on the PWR/UP tour and receiving nothing more than a friendly acknowledgment from people who recognized him. No selfies, no disruption. Just a shared understanding that everyone was there for the same reason. “That’s brotherhood,” he has said. “I know why you are here and I’m not going to fuck with that. You enjoy your thing. Let’s enjoy it together.” He contrasts this with other music scenes where the phone often matters more than the performance.
The same intensity that fuels his concert-going has also informed his acting. For the role of Max Cady, the vengeance-driven antagonist in the new Cape Fear, Bardem deliberately leaned into heavy music. He told Kerrang! that the production went for a metal aesthetic and that he loved it. Specific songs stayed in heavy rotation while he prepared and shot. He repeatedly returned to Linkin Park’s “Given Up,” the late Chester Bennington’s raw performance of frustration and rage, and “Up From the Bottom” from the band’s later album From Zero, praising new singer Emily Armstrong as an “amazing singer” who brought the group back with force. Tracks by Slipknot, Falling in Reverse and Bad Omens rounded out the playlist. Those songs, he said, expressed the fight to rise from one’s own ashes—an emotional current that aligned with Cady’s obsessive drive. The music was not a gimmick. It was simply what he already listened to, now serving a practical purpose on set.
Bardem’s taste has always been broader than pure nostalgia. While the classics remain foundational, he keeps current. Metallica still features heavily. Bad Omens and Falling in Reverse appear regularly in his recent comments. He has name-checked Pantera and Iron Maiden in the past. In one red-carpet interview he even joked that if he were DJing an Oscars after-party he would play thrash and speed metal before winding down with Motörhead, because Lemmy’s voice somehow helps him sleep. The through-line is consistency. Whether the record is forty-five years old or brand new, the qualities he values—energy, honesty, community—remain the same.
There is also a quieter personal detail that often gets lost in the rock-star anecdotes. Bardem has credited AC/DC with helping him learn English. As a boy in Spain he studied the lyric sheets that came with the cassettes, trying to match the Spanish translations to the words he was hearing. The process taught him vocabulary, including plenty of the more colorful terms, and created an early, practical connection to the language he would later need for an international career. The band that gave him his first musical identity also gave him tools for the profession that would make him famous.
In an industry that often treats celebrity musical tastes as branding exercises, Bardem’s relationship with metal feels unusually lived-in. He does not present it as a quirky hobby or a carefully curated playlist designed for interviews. He talks about it the way longtime fans talk about it—casually, specifically, and with the assumption that the music itself is the point. The ten-year-old who heard that opening riff and decided his life had changed is the same man who still seeks out the pit, still uses the music to prepare for demanding roles, and still believes the community around hard rock and metal offers something rare.
Highway to Hell was never just an album for him. It was a doorway. More than four decades later, Javier Bardem is still walking through it, headbanging as he goes.
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