Lifestyle
Gael García Bernal believes that nothing ends — it just transforms
Gael García Bernal was basically fated to be an actor.
Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images
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Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images
A note from Wild Card host Rachel Martin: I’ve had a lot of jobs in my life. I was a typist at an insurance company. An English teacher in Japan. I drove a bar cart around a golf course. I’ve worked at a whitewater rafting company and an art gallery. What I’m saying is it took me more than a minute to figure out what my thing was. You know, I’m frankly still figuring this out to some degree. And I am a grown-ass woman.
Other people get this gift early in their lives. A door opens. They go through it and that’s it. They’ve found their place, their purpose, their thing. I’m pretty sure that’s what happened to Gael García Bernal. His dad was a film director and his mom an actress. So Gael was thrust into the business really young. He starred in a Mexican telenovela when he was just 13. Then came theater school in London and a role in the film Amores Perros, which was nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign Film. And that changed everything.
Next came his iconic role in Y tu mamá también, alongside his lifelong friend Diego Luna. There had never been a coming of age movie like this one. It challenged all the norms around masculinity and sexual discovery. And in that movie, we see the beginnings of a long career for Gael García Bernal, one that would be filled with surprising, magical roles that upend the audience’s expectations.
Just like in his new limited series on Hulu called La Máquina. With each new film or show, it’s like he is just as hungry as he was in the early stages of his career. Acting came for him early and it stuck. And we are so lucky it did.
The trailer for ‘La Máquina.’
YouTube
This Wild Card interview has been edited for length and clarity. Host Rachel Martin asks guests randomly-selected questions from a deck of cards. Tap play above to listen to the full podcast, or read an excerpt below.
Question 1: What’s a place where you feel like the best version of yourself?
Gael García Bernal: I grew up in the theater with my parents. It felt like when I was a kid, theater and life were very intertwined. The stage was just a step away. So in a way, I realized growing up that I was born into something special — into a world that is very unique. And the more I grew up, the more I saw the difference. There was the outside and there was inside. There was my home and there was the world. And there was a big moment in my adolescence that I didn’t want to be an actor.
Rachel Martin: Oh, is that right?
García Bernal: I was completely and absolutely reluctant to do it because that’s where I was born in a way. That’s the place that was handy for me. So I wanted the challenge of something else. And I had other curiosities with archeology or sociology or anthropology, philosophy, and I studied philosophy in the Mexican National Autonomous University. And so I tried my best to not become an actor. And it was impossible to escape it. For me, it isn’t the acting, it isn’t being on stage. It is the smell of the place. It is like a temple kind of thing. It is the place where I know that everything will be OK. There is this moment of incredible tension and excitement before going on stage, you know, before appearing. And then when you’re there, everything is amazing. Everything is just incredible. So I think I’m the best version of myself because, first of all, I don’t know who I am. So I guess the best of myself, kind of — not shines through, but that’s what we see in an actor when we look at their performances, we know they are someone else.
Martin: I had never thought about it that way, though, that it can seem counterintuitive to say I am the truest, best version of myself when I am acting. That seems like a major contradiction.
García Bernal: Yeah. I think it took me a while to come to terms and also to come at peace with that, because I was reluctant about that. I saw acting as something else when I was young and I started to find like, “Oh, this is quite an existential journey — to interpret someone. And therapeutic as well and cathartic and you can sublimate so many things.”
Question 2: What have you found surprising about getting older?
García Bernal: Now I know how to do things better, but my body’s not responding as it used to, no? So, for example, with football — I play a lot of football and I just gave up because now it hurts. And I get hurt. But I think I play better than ever because now I know where to [go and] what position to be in.
Martin: It’s so cruel.
García Bernal: Yeah, it’s so cruel. So cruel.
Gael García Bernal and Diego Luna speak at the 76th Primetime Emmy Awards in September.
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Kevin Winter/Getty Images
Question 3: Have your feelings about death changed over time?
García Bernal: Oh, yes, yes. It’s changed a lot. Definitely. I guess the first time for me, and must have been for many, many people as well, is becoming a father, no? Like, for example, somebody the other day was telling me, like, “Does anyone remember the name of the grandfather of your grandfather?” And I was like, “No. I don’t think no one remembers that I know.” Like, wow, it’s crazy how all these things that we’re going to build and all these structures that we fight for or try to achieve…
And so therefore, you see that transcendence is something else, no? And definitely with a baby transcendence is there, no? There is something that is there and will continue and will live and will reproduce and will be something else and you will just admire.
But it is similar to what we do in films, as well. I mean my approach to doing films — and it might sound a little bit presumptuous — but it’s like trying to do something that hopefully has some transcendence. You really want these films to kind of transcend and hopefully be seen in many, many years, because that’s who we were at that point.
Martin: So what does that transcendence mean for you? Like, if you were to be able to convey one thing that lived on after you expire. What is the thing?
García Bernal: Well, fortunately many of the things that I’ve participated in have helped amplify the dimensions of many discussions and of many conversations that had to happen in my time. These films have been emollients or catalysts of something, or have been accompanying certain issues — very interesting concepts of, “What is democracy?” For example, I recommend that film No by Pablo Larraín. We did it in Chile a few years ago and it is about the moment where they ousted Pinochet, the dictator, and it’s incredible the whole sort of anthropological game that is played there because it is a project about democracy. What is democracy, no? And I love doing that. So I wish that all these projects have transcendence that I’m able to grasp as well and to feel, but that when I’m not here anymore, they will be seen as kind of like, “Oh, these guys made their best effort. These guys really tried to do something.”
Question 4: Do you think that there is a part of people that lives on after they die?
García Bernal: Yes, I do. If I don’t enjoy — not believe — but, like, enjoy or dwell on the mystery of things, then I think I wouldn’t be an actor. Because if I had the certainty and I would be like, “I’m only about the facts,” then I would read the phone book. That would be my wonderful, kind of like, joy of reading the phone book. That is real. It’s super real.
So I love the mystery and the poetic behind all of it — but not as a believer. Mostly like that kind of enjoyment or curiosity. Nothing ends. Everything transforms. And that’s a law of physics. And I can feel it.
I mean, there are so many examples I can say, some of them are incredibly personal. But when we knew that my daughter was — that we were pregnant, my father passed away. So it was that kind of, like, tag team (laughs). Yeah.
Students walk on the Stanford University campus on March 14, 2019, in Stanford, Calif.
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Ben Margot/AP
When Theo Baker arrived at Stanford University a few years ago, he joined the student newspaper, following the path of his journalist parents, Peter Baker, a White House correspondent for The New York Times, and Susan Glasser, a writer for The New Yorker.
Through his reporting as a student journalist, he eventually broke a story about manipulated data in Stanford President Marc Tessier-Lavigne’s neuroscience research that helped lead to the university president’s resignation.
Theo Baker’s book, How to Rule the World: An Education in Power at Stanford University was released May 19. In it, Baker describes Stanford as a place where proximity to Silicon Valley gives rise to a parallel system of influence, recruitment and money, with investors looking to identify promising students almost as soon as they arrive on campus.
He told Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep there was “a sort of Stanford inside Stanford,” where elite students are drawn into an “alternate reality” of excess and access to cut corners.
In the interview, he discusses how Stanford is not just a university but also a pipeline where status and power can matter as much as ideas.
We reached out to Stanford University for comment and have not heard back.
Listen to the interview by clicking play on the blue box above.
The scoreboard shows the results of the women’s singles final match between Iga Swiatek of Poland and Amanda Anisimova of the U.S. at the Wimbledon Tennis Championships in London, Saturday, July 12, 2025.
Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP
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Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP
Fifteen points in tennis? Nice. Thirty, 40 — even better. Advantage — that sounds good. “Love” — that also must be great, right? Well, not quite.
As the French Open rolls on and Serena Williams has announced her return to the sport, maybe you’ve been paying a little more attention to tennis. The sport’s scoring system is notably distinct, and can sometimes be hard to grasp for newcomers. But even tennis aficionados might not know why, or how, “love” became the unmistakable callout for zero points. For this installment of NPR’s Word of the Week, we’re exploring how a word that signifies trailing behind got such a sweet name.
“Love” comes from the heart — or an egg?
It’s hard to pinpoint when the first tennis ball went over the net. Tennis is a derivative of lots of other sports, such as “jeu de paume,” a handball game played in France, said JT Buzanga, the collections manager at the International Tennis Hall of Fame museum.
But tennis became a patented, official sport in 1874, said Steve Flink, a journalist whose tennis coverage got him inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame. It has retained its unique, mysterious scoring system ever since.
“By and large, the original system has held up almost entirely,” Flink said.
The use of “love” goes back to the late 18th century, said Jesse Sheidlower, a lexicographer. But it was used earlier than that in card games such as whist and bridge. Before the term made its way to tennis, the sport favored plain old “nothing,” or “nil,” he said.
Why love in the first place, though? Historians don’t really know for sure, but there are a few theories.
The French could have something to do with it. Some historians believe “love” derives from “l’oeuf,” which means “the egg” in French. Because eggs are shaped like zeros, terms such as “goose egg” and “duck’s egg” have been used in other contexts to mean zero, Sheidlower said.
It’s also possible English speakers mispronounced l’oeuf as “love.” But Sheidlower isn’t convinced that’s the answer.
“It’s the French equivalent of an English expression. But since that expression doesn’t appear in French, the French word wouldn’t have been used,” he said.
To be sure, France has had a lot of influence on tennis culture, Buzanga said. For example, “deuce” or a game tied at 40 points, comes from the French word for “two”: “deux.” But he prefers another prominent theory: that “love” comes from the idiom “for the love of the game.” Even if a player hasn’t scored, it doesn’t matter, because their heart is in it. It’s the theory Sheidlower said is the most plausible, because the idiom was used by the English before tennis was popularized.
Another variation of the “love of the game” theory is that the word could have come from the Dutch “lof,” or “honor” — or the Latin “amare,” meaning “to love,” Flink said.
But if tennis’ “love” doesn’t come from a French word, the theory at least has a French sensibility.
“I think the ‘for the love of the game’ is kind of romantic,” Buzanga said.
“Love” probably isn’t going anywhere
Tennis used to be a sport of leisure. The style of play has changed a lot over the years; players are more athletic and competitive, for instance, Flink said. But the rules of the sport are more steadfast, he said.
“There’s this incredible, enduring respect for tradition in tennis,” he said. “Changes are not made easily.”
There has been one major change in modern history: the tie-break. Matches can go on and on because players have to score two consecutive points to break a deuce, or by two games to break a tied set. But the onset of television meant matches would have to get shorter if the sport wanted to capture a larger audience, Flink said.
Change even came for “love.” An alternative sprouted up in the 1970s, and is still used today: “bagel,” named for its zero shape, Sheidlower said. Novices may say “zero,” and insiders will understand what they mean, but they “will needle them about it,” Flink said.
But “love” still prevails.
“People kind of like it,” Flink said. “It’s different. Why say zero when you can say love?”
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