Pilar Bardem

María del Pilar Bardem Muñoz (14 March 1939 – 17 July 2021) was a Spanish film and television actress. In 1996, she won the Goya Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role in Nobody Will Speak of Us When We're Dead.

She was the mother of Carlos, Mónica, and Javier Bardem.

Pilar Bardem was born to Barcelonian actor Rafael Bardem and Madrilenian actress Matilde Muñoz Sampedro in Seville on 14 March 1939, while her parents were working with the theatre company of Carmen Díaz. She had an elder sister named the same as her who died at age 8 two years before her birth. Her elder brother Juan Antonio Bardem was a film director. Three months old, she relocated with her family to Barcelona, and then to Madrid, where she spent her childhood. She travelled in a theatre tour for the first time at age 13, accompanying her parents. She made her debut onstage at age 18, in a play of Mourning Becomes Electra. Influenced by a Jesuit priest working in her school, she started medicine studies but dropped out in her third year, and started working as model for the likes of Loewe and Balenciaga. She made her big screen debut as an actress in Life Goes On (1965).

She was a regular in the television series Compuesta y sin novio (1994), Hermanas (1998), El Inquilino (2004), and Amar en tiempos revueltos (2005–2007).

Bardem was the recipient of the Goya Award for Best Supporting Actress, the Premios ACE for Best Supporting Actress, the Valladolid International Film Festival Award for Best Actress, and two Spanish Actors Union Awards for her performances.

In 2015, she made her last film appearance in Gipsy King.

Pilar Bardem was often called "La Bardem", and was well known in Spain not only as an actress, but for her outspoken left-wing political views, particularly close to the party United Left. During the dictatorship of Francisco Franco she remained close to the clandestine Communist Party.

She toiled for "labor rights for actors, civil rights for women", and "a more liberal Catholic Church" (she affirmed a belief that women should be able to become priests). Bardem identified her long struggle, working several jobs at once to raise her children, as not uncommon. She was just "one of so many".