Patrick Ryan

USA TODAY

NEW YORK — Gael García Bernal has no need for trophy cases.

In January, the Mexican actor won a Golden Globe Award for his role as an impish conductor on Amazon's Mozart in the Jungle, which also won for best comedy or musical series. Rather than display his prize, "it's in my kids' room," he says. "Conceptually, it's really fun, and what we do (as actors) is a game, so it's with the toys."

Bernal, 38, brings that same blithesome attitude to the third season of Mozart (streaming Friday), which briefly trades in its New York digs for the winding waterways of Venice, where maestro Rodrigo (Bernal) is summoned to assist a fraught opera diva (Monica Bellucci). But he can't shake his guilt for leaving his cash-strapped symphony behind in Manhattan, nor the love triangle that ensues when oboist Hailey (Lola Kirke) lands in Italy.

Their relationship is "a bit undefinable," Bernal says. In a broader sense, Rodrigo is having "a crisis, feeling a need to go back somewhere, to someone or something. It's nice to see a character going through that introspection."

But the Floating City isn't the only thing new to Mozart this season. Bernal, whose directorial credits include short films and a feature (2007's Spanish-language Déficit), helms the penultimate episode. Directing "felt very natural and very immediate," the actor says. "It's like the manifestation of Rodrigo. There is something to how he becomes the director," only with an orchestra.

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Bernal, who's best known for Spanish-language films Y Tu Mamá También and The Motorcycle Diaries, can also be seen on the big screen this year in two dramas, both of which have been submitted as entries for best foreign language film at the Academy Awards: Mexico's Desierto, released in October, and Chile's Neruda (in theaters Dec. 16 in New York and Los Angeles, expands nationwide through January and February).

Neruda reunites Bernal with director Pablo Larraín (Jackie), after their collaboration on 2012 political drama No. The literary thriller traces two years in the life of Chilean poet/activist Pablo Neruda (Luis Gnecco), who becomes entangled in a game of cat-and-mouse with a detective (Bernal) after joining the Communist party in the late 1940s.

Bernal was drawn to Guillermo Calderón's semi-fictionalized script because a poet is someone who "is unattainable," he says. Reading poetry, "we experience the writer through our own interpretation and perspective on everything we've lived, so it was the right approach."

After No, Larraín was looking for another opportunity to work with Bernal and conceived the semi-comedic character for him.

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"He's a very smart actor and has a very particular sense of humor, something that you can tell by looking at the movie," Larraín says. "I remember when we were making (it), many times I'd have to leave the set because I was just laughing. He's funny and also just a very good friend."

Border thriller Desierto flexes Bernal's dramatic chops. He stars as a migrant worker fighting for survival as he crosses the U.S. border and faces off against a racist, gun-wielding vigilante (Jeffrey Dean Morgan). Signing on to the film before the U.S. presidential election, "it was a manifestation of our worst nightmare, but little did we know, it's the nightmare we're living in right now," he says.

But for the actor, who lives in Mexico City, it's no coincidence that he appears in two politically minded films within months. Work has "always been political, it's always been personal," Bernal says. "I would argue that it has to be that way. We live in a time where politics has to be artistic as well."