Early life and education

Almeida was born in Lisbon, on 15 March 1957, the son of João Baptista de Almeida and Maria Sara Portugal. At the age of eighteen, after attending a theater course at the Lisbon Conservatory (School of Theatre and Cinema) for two years, he left Portugal to continue his studies after the Conservatory was temporarily closed following the 1974 democratic revolution. He spent a year in Vienna, moving again, in 1976, to New York City where he studied at the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute, a school for the performing arts frequented by famous actors such as Robert De Niro, Al Pacino and Angelina Jolie.

Career

1980s

After doing some theater, Almeida started his film career in 1982 appearing in The Soldier. His first significant role came in a 1983 film, The Honorary Consul, where he starred alongside Michael Caine, Richard Gere and Bob Hoskins, being his first appearance in an American film. Despite cameo appearances in TV series such as Miami Vice, it was some years later that he made huge impact in his career, appearing in the Good Morning, Babylon, a film, directed by Paolo and Vittorio Taviani, that opened the Cannes Film Festival in 1987. Being fluent in six languages, he continued his acting career in several countries such as Portugal, England, Spain, France, Italy, Brazil, Argentina and Germany, working in numerous films.

1990s

In 1994, Joaquim de Almeida played Félix Cortez, a former colonel of Cuban military intelligence in the Tom Clancy thriller, Clear and Present Danger, co-starring Harrison Ford, Willem Dafoe and Anne Archer. The film debuted at number one in the box office, earning a reported $20.5 million in the United States. Clear and Present Danger was a great success and was nominated for two Academy Awards. Later in 1994, Almeida starred alongside Robert Downey, Jr., Marisa Tomei and Bonnie Hunt in the romantic comedy Only You, in which he plays a suave Italian businessman named Giovanni. According The New York Times, the film director and producer Norman Jewison said: "I interviewed many actors for the role.... There was one Italian actor, fairly prominent, that I met in L.A. and again in New York and in Rome. And I wanted to meet several other Italian actors in Italy.". When the production moved from Pittsburgh to Italy last fall, however, none of the country's actors seemed right for what Mr. Jewison called "the cliched Italian gigolo, the guy that women from the Midwest always meet." After the interview with Joaquim de Almeida, Mr. Jewison recalls: "Howard Feuer, the casting director, said, 'Joaquim's not that tall. He's not that handsome. He's no Rossano Brazzi here.' I said, 'But listen to his voice.' There's a machoness. Especially when he lowers it, whispers, leans across the table and pours you another glass of wine. He can be extremely intimate with his voice."

In 1995, Almeida co-starred with Antonio Banderas and Salma Hayek in the Robert Rodriguez's action thriller Desperado. This film is the sequel to Rodriguez's independent film El Mariachi and the second entry in the Mexico Trilogy. Joaquim de Almeida portrays the main villain Bucho, a wealthy but casually bloodthirsty drug kingpin, who rules a seedy Mexican border town. Almeida replaced Raúl Juliá as Bucho, following Juliá's death in 1994. Desperado was screened out of competition at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival. He won a Portuguese Golden Globe for Best Actor in his next film, the 1995 Portuguese drama Adão e Eva (Adam and Eve), where he played the main female character career rival Francisco.

In 1997 he appeared in the miniseries Nostromo and starred in the Luís Galvão Teles' drama Elles (Women). The film is a sensuous but overstuffed soap opera about women, named Linda, of a certain age confronting the usual insecurities, offers one solution to the problem of how to cram five personal dramas into the same film. Almeida played Linda's husband Gigi. Next year, he co-starred with Eric Roberts in the 1998 Jack Perez's thriller La Cucaracha. The plot follows a New Jersey office worker Walter, who quits his job and heads to Santiago, Mexico, to become a writer but instead is thrust into the role of hitman by Almeida's character Jose Guerra. The film premiered at the Austin Film Festival where it won the Feature Film Award.

2000s

In 2001, Joaquim de Almeida starred in the Brazilian comedy O Xangô de Baker Street, where he plays the legendary British detective Sherlock Holmes. The film is based in a book written in 1995 by the Brazilian author Jô Soares about a case involving Sherlock Holmes and is his loyal friend Doctor Watson, who are called by the Brazilian Emperor Pedro II, to find the thief of a priceless Stradivarius owned by his lover. Due Almeida's good representation of the character, he won another Portuguese Golden Globe for best actor, his third, and was nominated for Cinema Brazil Grand Prize award for best actor. Also in 2001 Almeida had a great supporting role in the war film Behind Enemy Lines as Admiral Juan Miguel Piquet, the commander of NATO's naval forces, starring alongside Owen Wilson and Gene Hackman. The film, based on the Mrkonjić Grad incident, is centered on the story of an American naval flight officer, played by Owen Wilson, who was shot down over Bosnia, who ends up uncovering a massacre during the Bosnian conflict.

In 2004, he starred with Daryl Hannah and Denise Richards in Yo Puta, a gritty docu-style prostitution tale, based on a bestselling book by Spaniard Isabel Pisano, that tracks the slow descent of a girl, into the sex business, which is interspersed with interviews with real-life prostitutes. That same year, he joined the cast of the American hit drama 24 as Ramon Salazar, the ruthless leader of a drug cartel who is put into—and later broken out of—prison by Jack Bauer. In 2007, Joaquim de Almeida limns a brutal foreman named Baxter, in the Antonio Cuadri's El corazón de la tierra, a heady romance with a social conscience. Later that year, he turned his attention towards romantic drama La Cucina, a film about several mostly separated storylines in which couples, friends and associates meet for a night of cooking and befriending. Almeida portrays a Spanish born photo journalist named Michael. Next year, he starred in the Che: Part Two, a biographical film about an Argentine doctor-turned-international revolutionary named Ernesto Guevara. Almeida played President René Barrientos, a former Bolivian politician who served as his country's Vice President in 1964 and as its President from 1964 to 1969. In the same year he also appeared in the drama film The Burning Plain as local man named Nick Martinez, starring alongside Charlize Theron and Kim Basinger. He also provided his voice for the animated show The Batman as the voice of the villain Bane, and reprised his role in all of his appearances in the show except one in which Ron Perlman voices the character for one line.

2010s

On 16 July 2010, Joaquim de Almeida was confirmed to be taking on the role of antagonist Hernan Reyes in the 2011 action film Fast Five directed by Justin Lin and co-starring Vin Diesel, Paul Walker and Dwayne Johnson. Hernan Reyes is a corrupt businessman and ruthless Brazilian drug lord who provides resources to the favelas in Rio to gain control over them. The film took $3.8 million in receipts during launch midnight showings marking the best ever opening for a Universal title and The Fast and The Furious franchise. Fast Five became the highest grossing film of 2011 for 15 days before being replaced on 30 May 2011.

Filmography

Main article: Joaquim de Almeida filmography

Films

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1983	The Honorary Consul	Leon	Movie nominated for two BAFTA Film Awards.
1987	Good Morning, Babylon	Andrea Bonanno	Movie presented in 1987 Cannes Film Festival.
1990	Sandino	Augusto César Sandino	-
1994	Clear and Present Danger	Col. Felix Cortez	Movie nominated for two Academy Awards.
1995	O Xangô de Baker Street	Sherlock Holmes	Brazil.
1995	Desperado	Bucho (Cesar)	Movie presented in 1995 Cannes Film Festival.
1997	Women
2001	Behind Enemy Lines	Admiral Piquet	-
2008	The Burning Plain	Nick Martinez	-
2011	Fast Five	Hernan Reyes	-
2013	The Golden Cage	José Ribeiro	"People's Choice Award" at the 26th European Film Awards.
2015	Our Brand is Crisis	Pedro Castillo	-

Awards and nominations

Year	Ceremony	Award	Film/TV Show	Result
1994	Cairo International Film Festival	Cairo International Film Festival Award for Best Actor	Retrato de Família	Won
1995	Portuguese Golden Globes	Golden Globe for Best Actor	Adão e Eva	Won
1997	Portuguese Golden Globes	Golden Globe for Best Actor	Sostiene Pereira	Nominated
1998	Portuguese Golden Globes	Golden Globe for Best Actor	Tentação	Won
2000	Portuguese Golden Globes	Golden Globe for Best Actor	Inferno	Nominated
2002	Cinema Brazil Grand Prize	Cinema Brazil Grand Prize for Best Actor	O Xangô de Baker Street	Nominated
	Portuguese Golden Globes	Golden Globe for Best Actor		Won
2004	Festival Cinema de Badajoz	Career Award	-	Won
2005	Screen Actors Guild Awards	Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series	24	Nominated
2006	Portuguese Golden Globes	Golden Globe for Best Actor	Um Tiro no Escuro	Nominated
2008	Avanca Film Festival	Avanca Film Festival Award for Best Actor	Óscar. Una pasión surrealista	Won
2009	Festival de Cine Iberoamericano de Huelva	Prize of the City of Huelva	-	Won

[ Source: Wikipedia ]