CANNES, France – Javier Bardem is one of Europe’s hottest actors. But the Spanish star is astonished to find himself feted at Cannes for starring in a modern-day Western set under the big skies of west Texas.

Bardem plays a psychopath who dishes out death without reason or remorse in “No Country for Old Men” from filmmaking brothers Joel and Ethan Coen (“Fargo,” “The Big Lebowski”).

It isn’t a typical movie, or a typical role for Bardem. He was nominated for an Academy Award in 2001 for playing persecuted Cuban poet Reinaldo Arenas in “Before Night Falls,” and gained more plaudits for “The Sea Inside,” the Oscar-winning Spanish film about a paralyzed man fighting for the right to die.

“I’m a European actor, and I have some problems with violence,” Bardem said Sunday. “Violence is something I haven’t really played very much in movies.”

Meeting the Coen brothers and reading their script eased his worries. Adapted from a novel by Cormac McCarthy, the film is a taut thriller that explores the meaning of violence and the nature of good and evil.

“Our first talk with Javier was about his qualms,” said Ethan Coen, half of the writing/producing/directing partnership. “He wanted to make sure we felt the same way (as he did) and that we weren’t doing a Chuck Norris movie.”

Bardem, 38, supplies much of the film’s humor – and horror – as Anton Chigurh, a mysterious killer trying to retrieve a briefcase of stolen drug money. Josh Brolin is the laconic Vietnam vet who unwisely attempts to make off with the cash, while Tommy Lee Jones is the old-fashioned sheriff trying to stop a tide of carnage he can scarcely comprehend.

The film has been warmly received at Cannes, where it is contending for the Palme d’Or. It is slated for a November opening in North America.

A member of a Spanish acting family, Bardem became a sex symbol in the early 1990s in the surreal, steamy Spanish comedy “Jamon, Jamon.”

He is cast against type in the Coens’ movie: His character is jowly and deadpan, with a helmet-like hairdo and pasty skin. Chigurh is unrecognizable in the tanned, T-shirt-clad Bardem, who devours breadrolls during lunch with journalists at a beachside restaurant.

Bardem said he had wanted to work with the Coens for years, but doubted it would happen because they make “deeply American movies” with a strong sense of place.

“No Country for Old Men” is rooted in the unforgiving Texas terrain. But Chigurh is an outsider, an enigmatic stranger who comes to town with murder on his mind. Bardem says that made the character easier to play.

“All the work I usually do: imagining the past, the circumstances of the character – in this case I didn’t do it,” he said.

“We all saw him as a force of nature – the embodiment of violence.”

The film is sure to raise Bardem’s profile with English-language audiences. He’ll soon be seen in an adaptation of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s “Love in the Time of Cholera” directed by Mike Newell (“Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.”) This summer, he shoots Woody Allen’s new movie in Barcelona, alongside Scarlett Johansson and his old friend Penelope Cruz.

Bardem said acting in English is getting easier. “I’m getting more comfortable now, but it will never get to the point as if you are doing it in your own language,” he said. “When I say ‘I love you’ or ‘I hate you’ in Spanish, many things come to my mind, aspects of my own life. When I say it in English, I don’t have the memories.”