Penélope Cruz: From Madrid to Hollywood – A Cinderella Story and Icon in the Making

“This sofa was very important to me, it was like a window to the world,” she told the fashion magazine “Elle” (March). “It helped me dream.” -accomplished everything professionally and personally, Cruz still has dreams and aspirations before 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.”

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 emotionality, her naturalness and, above all, her ability to slip into a wide range of roles attracted film greats such as Juliette BinocheRidley Scott oder Keira Knightley to hymns of praise. Cate Blanchett he described the Cruz/Almodovar duo as “legendary”.

In addition to the Oscar, “Pé” won, as she did Spain has been nominated, including the Bafta, the Goya and the European Film Awards. 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.

She still takes it Madrid regular acting lessons 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.

After marrying Bardem in 2010, they both continued to live there The Angels, but at some point the down-to-earth couple moved back to Madrid, where they still live today. Both in the United States as well as in Spain, the two managed to stay scandal-free in the difficult business and largely protect their private lives. Cruz revealed to “Elle” that she sometimes flies back and forth to Los Angeles for work in one day so as not to neglect her children. “You are my priority today.”