In light of hottie Javier Bardem’s recent Oscar win, Popnography decided to look back at Out magazine’s 2001 interview with the actor, when he was promoting the biopic Before Night Falls, about gay Cuban writer Reinaldo Arenas.

Here’s some interesting quotes and some hot pictures to boot.

> ON THE REVELATORY FILMING EXPERIENCE: “I can now grasp how a man could look at another man and immediately want to lift his legs to Jesus.”

> ON JOHNNY DEPP AS TRANSVESTITE PRISON GUARD BON BON: “When I first saw Bon Bon on the set, I didn’t realize it was Johnny. I just looked at this girl with the heavy makeup and the big behind and thought, man, I could get into that. I still felt such a way after I realized it was Johnny. He’s such a beautiful guy — who wouldn’t want to make love with him? And I know a lot of real girls who would kill to have Bon Bon’s ass.”

> ON FAKING IT: “I’m not a homosexual, but if I have to kiss a man, I have to feel the desire. Otherwise I will be lying, in a way that is perhaps worse than the lying that gay actors convey when, offscreen, they say they are straight. It’s worse because I am being fake to an audience. I had to find in myself the man who would like to make love with another man.”