On Friday, October 7, Marvel Studios’ first special Werewolf by Night released on Disney+. Werewolf by Night is a name that was used by two different Marvel characters and both were able to transform into a wolf. The special has been directed by Michael Giacchino and stars Gael García Bernal, Laura Donnelly, and Harriet Sansom Harris. Bernal plays the eponymous monster as well as its human version, Jack Russell.

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Who is Gael García Bernal?

Gael García Bernal, born on November 30, 1978, is a renowned Mexican actor and producer. His performances in films like The Motorcycle Diaries where he played the role of a young Ernesto “Che” Guevara and his role as Rodrigo de Souza in the series Mozart in the Jungle have garnered worldwide attention and praise.

Gael was nominated for a BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role for his role in The Motorcycle Diaries in 2005, and he won his first Golden Globe Award for Best Actor for Mozart in the Jungle in 2016. TIME magazine named him in the annual TIME 100 most influential people list in 2016.

Bernal was born in Guadalajara, Mexico, to José Ángel García, an actor and director, and Patricia Bernal, an actress and former model. Sergio Yazbek became his stepfather when he was very young after getting married to Patricia. He started acting at just one year old. García Bernal taught many indigenous people in Mexico how to read, often working with the Huichol people when he was just fourteen.

In his later years, he began studying philosophy at UNAM, Mexico’s national university although, during a prolonged student strike, he took a sabbatical to travel around Europe. He became the first Mexican to be accepted to study at the Central School of Speech and Drama, London.

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After garnering fame and success in soap operas, Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu offered García to be a part of his feature directorial debut Amores perros in 2000. The film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. He then went on to work in Alfonso Cuarón’s Y tu mamá también, which was very successful in the American markets and gained him fame on the international stage. García Bernal portrayed a young Che Guevara in The Motorcycle Diaries (2004), an adaptation of a journal the 23-year-old Ernesto wrote about his travels around South America. It broke the box office record set by Gael’s previous film Y tu mamá también and garnered Bernal a BAFTA nomination in 2005 for Best Performance by an Actor in the Leading Role.

García Bernal and Diego Luna are childhood friends from Mexico and jointly own Canana Films.

In 2014, Garcia was announced as a member of the main competition jury at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival. In the same year, he was casted in the lead role in the Amazon Studios’ television series named Mozart in the Jungle. His performance earned him a Golden Globe Award in 2016.

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In 2017, he was announced as one of the U.S. Dramatic Jury’s members at the Sundance Film Festival. He has provided the voice of Héctor, an undead trickster and one of the leads of the Pixar animated film Coco. García Bernal founded The Ambulante Documentary Film Festival with the aim to bring documentary films to places where they are rarely shown. 

García Bernal was together with his partner, Argentine actress Dolores Fonzi for 8 years from 2006 to 2014. On January 8, 2009, they had their first child, a son named Lázaro was born in Madrid, Spain. Their second-born daughter, Libertad, was born on 4 April 2011 in Buenos Aires. The couple split in September 2014. He now divides his time between Buenos Aires and Mexico City. Since 2019, he has been in a relationship with Mexican journalist Fernanda Aragonés. They welcomed their first child on September 30, 2021.