In the 80s, little Penelope Cruz watched some feature films up to 15 times on the red sofa in the living room of her parents’ house in the Madrid suburb of Alcobendas – and found herself daydreaming. The Spaniard is now, alongside her husband Javier Bardem (55) and Antonio Banderas (63), the biggest film star in her country – and also an international icon. Tomorrow Cruz celebrates her 50th birthday. The Oscar winner (“Vicky Cristina Barcelona”), who has the children Leo (13) and Luna (10) with Bardem, wants to direct in the future. She said that to her mentor, the Spanish star director Pedro Almodovar, at the beginning of her career.
The superstar in therapy
Cruz also has another, very special wish for his big birthday. She wants to be really “happy” and completely carefree at some point “I think I’m a pretty happy person, but also a pretty intense and worried person. There are things that – no matter how much therapy I do – are still there. Me and My worries. And I don’t know to what extent this can be improved.” The daughter of a car mechanic and a hairdresser is, among other things, afraid of driving, doesn’t like big, loud parties with lots of people and, with every new film, is afraid of “being fired in the first few days of filming,” as she once said. She is also insecure and “oversensitive in every way: visually, to sounds, to people’s feelings.” The insecurities and fears did not harm the trained ballet dancer’s career. According to the film database IMDb, she has worked as an actress in around 90 projects, including “Sahara”, “Vanilla Sky”, “Pirates of the Caribbean – On Stranger Tides”, “Sex and the City 2” and most recently “Ferrari”.
Image: Reuters
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Image: Reuters
At 15, Pe, as she is known in Spain, dropped out of school following gaining fame as a model and in a music video. At 17, she became a sex symbol for an entire country with her role in the film “Jamon Jamon,” where she met Bardem. Her international breakthrough came with the role of a pregnant nun with AIDS in the Almodovar film “Everything About My Mother” (1999). She became a global star following 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 still takes regular acting lessons in Madrid with one of her first teachers. She is also socially involved. In her early 20s, she spent time in India working for Mother Teresa’s organization. Today, among other things, she campaigns once morest violence once morest women and appears in low-budget films that denounce social injustices.
After marrying Bardem in 2010, both initially lived in Los Angeles, but at some point the couple moved back to Madrid, where they live today. Both in the USA and in Spain, the two managed to remain scandal-free in the difficult industry and to keep their private lives private. She sometimes flies back and forth to Los Angeles for work in one day so as not to neglect her children, she says. “You are my absolute priority today.”
