DIRECTOR Pedro Almodovar has no doubt why Gael Garcia Bernal was the best man for the job, playing three roles in his new film Bad Education. "He was very attractive as a boy and as a girl," says the Spanish film-maker.

"That was essential for understanding his character's relationship with others, the intensity with which everyone became obsessed with him.

"I guess it's the hardest work that Gael has ever done. On top of the difficulty of changing sex and not looking grotesque, there was the accent - I wanted him to speak Spanish, not Mexican which is very different."

Pretty soon everyone is going to want a piece of Bernal after starring roles in two films - Bad Education and The Motorcycle Diaries, in which he plays the young Che Guevara - being screened at this year's Cannes Film Festival.

A call from Hollywood can't be far away for the 25-year-old who's already starred in two of the biggest Mexican movies, Amores Perres and Y Tu Mama Tambien/And Your Mother Too, of recent years and coming to the attention of international audiences. A third, as a fornicating priest in The Crime Of Father Amaro, was a big hit in his native Mexico after being condemned by the Catholic Church.

Bernal's parents were actors and his own career began, at the age of 12, in a Mexican soap opera. He acted in films and theatre until moving to London at the age of 17 to train at Central School of Speech and Drama. He was cast in the Oscar-nominated Amores Perres halfway through his studies. That was followed by the raunchy two-teenagers-and-an-older woman hit Y Tu Mama with best friend Diego Luna, who's career has also taken off and is currently filming football film Goal in Newcastle.

He's an actor who's been likened to James Dean and Alain Delon. Or in the words of one smitten interviewer: "It's the face that grabs you first: those dark eyes and plump lips, that smouldering expression laced with something feral and mischievous. Few other actors are currently so hot, or so cool."

He's been living in America, but his heart belongs in Mexico. If he goes to Hollywood it will be on his own terms, just like his appearance as an Oscar presenter when he ignored the official script and wrote his own. "In a way I felt very free to say it. I couldn't fear anything because I haven't done a film there. I don't belong there. It was the first time I acted with common sense, real common sense," he says.

He reckons it would be easy to have a career in the US and make a lot of money. The films wouldn't necessarily be good but would make him rich, he says. His choices are more left field than commercial blockbusters, so it will be interesting to see if, like many before him, he gives in to Hollywood.

Bad Education offers him a gift of a role. Three parts, in fact - brothers and a transvestite - as he becomes the object of desire of virtually every character in the script.

This is in stark contrast to The Motorcycle Diaries, a film about Che's journey through Latin America in the 1950s. The road trip, as he witnessed the poverty, sparked his transformation into Che the rebel.

Bernal is heading back to Mexico which he feels as an exciting place. "There are a million more stories to tell from there, and that's what I want to do. I want to tell those stories," he says.

Bad Education (15), reviewed below, opens in cinemas tomorrow.

Published: 20/05/2004