Spanish actress Penélope Cruz turns 50. © Eduardo Parra/EUROPA PRESS/dpa
At 50 you still have dreams. And fear. Even if your name is Penélope Cruz and you are supposed to achieve everything. The Hollywood star from Spain shows a special wish for his big birthday.
Madrid – It’s a real “Cinderella Story”: On the red sofa in the living room of her modest parents’ house in the Madrid suburb of Alcobendas, little Penélope Cruz watched some major films up to 15 trips in the 80s. And he began to daydream. The Spaniard is now, together with her husband Javier Bardem (55) and Antonio Banderas (63), the biggest movie star in her country – and also an international icon.
“This sofa was very important to me, it was like a window to the world,” she told the fashion magazine “Elle” recently. “It helped me dream.” -accomplished everything professionally and privately, Cruz still has dreams and aspirations ahead of his 50th birthday on Sunday (April 28).
The Oscar winner (“Vicky Cristina Barcelona”), who has children Leo (13) and Luna (10) with Bardem, wants to direct it, as she revealed to the TV station RTVE. She said that to her mentor, the Spanish star director Pedro Almodóvar, at the beginning of her career. He suggested that she should not wait too long. “But I told him I’d wait at least until I was 50, and that’s probably what will happen now.”
“Me and My Worries”
Cruz also has another special wish for his big birthday. At some point she wanted to be really “happy” and completely carefree, she admitted to “Elle”. “I think I’m a very happy person, but also a very intense and worried person. There are things that no matter what treatment I do, they are still there. Me and my concerns. And I don’t know how much that can be improved.”
The daughter of a car mechanic and hairdresser, among other things, she is afraid of driving, she does not like big, loud parties with many people and, with every new film, she is afraid of being “burned in the first few days of filming,” as revealed not long ago to RTVE. She is insecure and “too sensitive in every way: visually, to sounds, to people’s feelings.”
However, the insecurities and fears did not harm the career of the trained ballet dancer, who is more in demand than ever as a model. According to the IMDb movie database, she has worked as an actress in about 90 projects, including “Sahara”, “Vanilla Sky”, “Pirates of the Caribbean – On Stranger Tides”, “Sex and the City 2” and recently “Ferrari”.
Her expressiveness, her naturalness and, above all, her ability to slip into a wide range of roles drew praises from film players such as Juliette Binoche, Ridley Scott and Keira Knightley. Cate Blanchett described the Cruz/Almodóvar duo as “legendary”.
Many awards
In addition to the Oscar, “Pé”, as she is known in Spain, also won Bafta, Goya and European Film Awards, among others. But she doesn’t count: “If I were to look back and see how much I’ve achieved or how many awards I’ve won, that wouldn’t help me be happy or keep growing.
The rise was meteoric: Cruz dropped out of school at 15 after getting her first small fame as a model and in a music video. At the age of 17, she became a sex symbol for an entire country with her role in the film “Jamón, Jamón” (Fancy for Meat), in which she met Bardem.
Her international breakthrough came with the role of a nun pregnant with AIDS in the Almodóvar film “All About My Mother” (1999), which paved her way to America. In Hollywood, at first she only caused a stir with romances with Tom Cruise and Matthew McConaughey. But after Woody Allen’s romantic comedy “Vicky Cristina Barcelona”, which made her the first Spanish actress to win an Oscar for best supporting actress in 2009, she became a global star.
social commitment
She still regularly takes acting lessons in Madrid with one of her first teachers, Juan Carlos Corazza. She is socially involved. In her early 20s, she spent time in India working for Mother Teresa’s group. Among other things, she campaigns publicly against violence against women and also appears in low-budget films that denounce social injustice, most recently in the Spanish film “En los Márgenes” in 2022, which is about forced evictions and migrants.
2024-04-27 22:51:17
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