She sizzles on screen, a pint-sized goddess with a penchant for her co-stars, but as Penélope Cruz tells us in this exclusive interview, film success is simply not enough.
It was supposed to be one of the most fiery and passionate love scenes of Penélope Cruz’s career and the actress admits that she was terrified. As she stripped down to her bra and pants, and slipped on a robe, she was asked to wait while the director finished rewriting the scene. So she waited. And waited.
“We all knew it was going to be a very, very important scene, but we didn’t know what was going to happen during it,” Penélope says, cupping her face in her hands. “We were just waiting, waiting to see what was going to happen, what I’d have to do. I was feeling very nervous. I thought I was going to pass out.”
It’s a stunning revelation for an unabashedly sensual star, one who first bared her nipples on screen at the age of 18 in the ridiculously named Jamón, Jamón (Ham, Ham), then played a pregnant nun given HIV by her transvestite lover (All About My Mother) and also bedded both Javier Bardem and Scarlett Johansson last year in Woody Allen’s hit, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, for which she won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in February.
Even so, she was relieved when she was handed the celebrated Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar’s revised script for the sex scene of her latest movie, Broken Embraces. The torrid and acrobatic screen sex that she had anticipated taking place between her character and the obsessive, lust-filled husband she had grown to hate was all to take place beneath a crisp, white sheet, the two actors writhing together as the sheet twisted and tangled above them.
“It was such a creative way to make a scene like that,” says Penélope, laughing. “I’ve never seen that done before. And for me … it worked so well. There was nothing gratuitous about it. It managed to be sexy and funny, both at once.”
Exactly the same, of course, could be said of Penélope Cruz herself. There are few actresses to rival her sizzling, dark-eyed sensuality on screen. Pedro Almodóvar says she has “one of the most spectacular cleavages in world cinema”. And Woody Allen says she is so beautiful that he can’t look at her directly because “it’s too overwhelming”.
Also, co-stars appear to fall in love with her, most notably Tom Cruise in the widely panned Vanilla Sky, and Javier Bardem, whom she met in 1992 and is now rumoured to be engaged to.
In an exclusive interview with The Weekly, Penélope talks about her new films, her brilliant career and her life outside movies. In the flesh, she has the poise of a goddess or, perhaps, a tiny, perfect, china doll.
Since she first won fame as an 18-year-old in the Spanish cult movie Jamón, Jamón and then went on to break into Hollywood with films such as All The Pretty Horses with Matt Damon, Captain Corelli’s Mandolin with Nicolas Cage, Blow with Johnny Depp, Vanilla Sky opposite Tom Cruise and Sahara with Matthew McConaughey, she hasn’t stopped working. Finally, she’s ready to take some time out, cutting back on her workload to give herself time for a personal life.
On her relationships…
Her relationship with fellow countryman Javier Bardem, 40, who himself won an Oscar last year for No Country For Old Men, probably has a lot to do with her decision. It continues to go from strength to strength and there have even been rumours of a pregnancy. “Now I really want to take some time for myself,” says Penélope. “For a long time, I’ve been making three or four movies a year. Now I want to make one movie a year. I want to have more time to live life.
“I sacrifice a lot for movies. Sometimes, I’m exhausted the whole time and don’t even know where I am from day to day. I have to travel a lot and it’s very tiring.
“I’m not complaining – I love what I do. But you do feel a lot of pressure and insecurity all the time, and sometimes I feel I just need more time for myself.”
While Penélope has always been notoriously reticent about her private life, she doesn’t hide her hopes that, some time in the future, she would like to start a family. At 35, she knows she can’t afford to wait much longer.
“Yes, I would like a family of my own one day,” she says. “I love children and I do tend to mother everyone on set around me. I don’t know if I believe in marriage, but I do believe in love and children and family. But I don’t know when …”
Your say: What do you think of the Penélope Cruz? Which film of hers is your favourite? Share your thoughts below…
Read more of this exclusive interview in the December issue of The Australian Women’s Weekly out now with Julie Goodwin on the cover.
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