Actor Garcia Bernal not tempted by Hollywood

By Fernanda Ezabella

SAO PAULO (Reuters) - Mexican actor Gael Garcia Bernal, star of "Babel" and "The Motorcycle Diaries", said he is not tempted to work in Hollywood, despite receiving many invitations.

"To work in Hollywood? No!," he told reporters at a film festival underway in Brazil's biggest city.

"The closest I got to Hollywood was a movie I did in Tijuana. And it is really close, about three hours," he added.

The actor said when he selects a project he thinks about the industry it represents. For now, Bernal is working with Latin American directors -- and helming his own movie.

In "The Past", directed by Argentine-Brazilian director Hector Babenco, he plays a father whose son is kidnapped.

"It's a role I had never done before, and I always had a strong desire to play a father in a movie story," he said.

The film is set in Buenos Aires, which the 28-year-old actor considers his second home. He plays a translator who starts to lose his memory after ending his 12-year marriage. His former wife hounds him and kidnaps his son.

His directorial debut, "Deficit", depicts the clash of different social classes in Mexico. He plays Cristobal, a young playboy who does not know how to deal with the poor family that looks after his house in the country, during a day-long party with his rich friends.

Bernal is now working in his third movie with a Brazilian director, Fernando Meirelles ("City of God", "The Constant Gardener"), called "Blindness", inspired by a Jose Saramago novel about a blindness epidemic that results in the collapse of society.