Penelope Cruz Born in Madrid. She is the daughter of merchant Eduardo Cruz, and Encarna Sanchez, a hairdresser. As a young girl, she studied dance at the National Conservatory of Music. At the age of fifteen, she participated in the selection of young talents, where she was noticed – she began working as a TV presenter in a program for teenagers. However, she dreamed of a bigger career and was ready to do a lot to achieve her goal. She developed her dancing skills at the Spanish Ballet and her acting skills at the Cristina Rota School in New York, and also completed a course in contemporary dance. Penelope soon decided to put everything on one card and dropped out of high school after only two years of study.
It paid off. For her first film role, she was nominated for the Goya Award, Spain's Academy Award. In the production of “Ham, Ham” (1992) directed by Fernando Trueba, she played the role of Sylvia, and her partner on the set was none other than Javier Bardem, whom she married after 18 years and two films. “I had the impression that this film was going to be something special. I knew the script was good. I knew it was something unique. Of course, I didn't really want to shoot sexy scenes, but I did it. Everyone treated me badly.” “Knowing that I was only 18 years old, I remember crying on the last day of filming and saying, ‘What if I never make a movie again?’” the actress recalled years later.
Cruz also appeared in Trueba's next film – “Belle Epoque”. Thanks to this, she was able to celebrate…the Academy Award that this production won in the category of Best Foreign Language Film (currently International). However, it was not the collaboration with Trueba that shaped her acting, but rather with another prominent Spanish director, Pedro Almodovar. The beautiful Penelope first played with him in the film “Shaking Flesh” (1997), where she met Bardem on the set.
In 1997, the artist also played one of the main roles in the thriller “Open Your Eyes”, which revolves around a rich, handsome man (Eduardo Noriega) who falls in love with his friend's girlfriend (Cruz), but is involved in an accident during which his face is smashed. distorted. Interestingly, just four years later, Cruise reprized her role as Sophia from “Open Your Eyes” in the Hollywood remake of “Amenabar.” In Cameron Crowe's Vanilla Sky, Noriega was played by Tom Cruise himself.
The launch of Cruz's career was another artistic meeting with Almodovar, who entrusted her with the role of Rosa in his Oscar-winning film “All About My Mother” (1999). But initially, the actress was unable to take advantage of the opportunity given to her. Her roles in “Woman on Top” (2000), where she played a beautiful cook, or in “Round Horses” (2000), a Billy Bob Thornton western, where she met Matt Damon on the set, went largely unnoticed. .
The following year was equally bad for the beautiful Penelope – her three roles earned her a collective nomination for the Golden Raspberry Award. The first was the aforementioned Sophia in “Vanilla Sky,” the second was Mirtha in “Blow,” inspired by the true story of George Jung (Johnny Depp) who in the 1980s made a fortune trading illegal substances, and the last one came from the melodrama “Captain Corelli,” where Cruise's Pelagia had an affair with the main character, played by Nicolas Cage.
However, Penelope soon recovered from this painful lesson and began acting in better and better films. The thriller “Gothika”, the costume “Fanfan Tulipan” or the melodrama “Head in the Clouds” may not have been universal hits, but Cruise's roles in them were unforgettable. Just like the role she played in “Passion” (2004), a melodrama by Sergio Castellitto. Another meeting with Almodovar turned out to be a cure for all evils. In the comedy-drama “Volver” (2006), Cruz played Raymonda, the alter ego of her own: a teenage daughter and sister who claims that she is haunted by the spirit, or rather his body, of her dead mother and husband. It should be disposed of as soon as possible. The film earned her the first nominations in her career: Academy Award, Golden Globe Award and BAFTA Award.
However, it was Woody Allen who brought her happiness. Cruz won an Oscar for playing the hysterical and beautiful if slightly crazy María Elena in his film Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008). It was on the set of this film that she met Javier Bardem for the third time (three times a charm?), which led first to an affair and then to marriage.
In the star-studded musical film Nine-Nine (2009), Cruz not only showed off her acting but also her dancing and vocal skills. Interestingly, Renée Zellweger took on this role. It paid off, because the role of Carla, the lover of the main character, played by Daniel Day-Lewis, brought her more Oscar and Golden Globe nominations.
Cruise rarely appears in blockbuster films. One exception to this rule was the fourth part of the film “Pirates of the Caribbean” subtitled “On Stranger Tides” (2011). We must admit that in the image of Rob Marshall she presented a great challenge to Captain Jack Sparrow, played by Johnny Depp.
Woody Allen's next film was not a success for Cruise. The rather mediocre “To Rome with Love” (2012) did not go unnoticed, among other things, thanks to her bold performance. A year later, we saw the Spanish beauty on our cinema screens thanks to Ridley Scott's film “The Lawyer” (2013). The men faced a big challenge: Who is more beautiful: Cameron Diaz or Penelope Cruz?
These were the star's only major performances at the beginning of the second decade of the third millennium. This is because she gave birth to two children: son Leo in 2011 and daughter Luna in 2013, which prompted her to take a break from acting for several years. But this did not prevent Esquire magazine from recognizing her as the sexiest woman in the world in 2014.
Cruz is back on screens, once again alongside Javier Bardem. They played the main roles in the production of “Loving Pablo, Hating Escobar” (2017) directed by Fernando León de Aranui, the story of the relationship between Pablo Escobar and Colombian broadcaster Virginia Vallejo. A year later, she appeared again in the film “Everybody Knows” (2018) by the famous Iranian director Asghar Farhadi alongside her husband. In the film, she played the role of a woman who returns to her hometown with her two children to attend her sister's wedding. Her teenage daughter disappears without a trace at a party.
The sixth joint film between Almodóvar and Cruz premiered at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival. In the production titled “Pain and Glory”, the main role was played by one of the director's favorite actors – Antonio Banderas, who received the Best Actor award at the event and was also nominated For an Oscar. The film itself also had a chance to win the Most Important Film award, but in the Best International Film category it had to accept the superiority of the South Korean “Parasite”. In turn, Cruz, in this story about a famous Spanish director recalling the most important moments of his life, played the role of the main character's mother in flashbacks.
The next creation of the actress also came from a painting by the Spanish master of cinema. “Parallel Mothers” was the story of two lonely women who did not suspect that their fates and the fates of their children would intertwine at completely unexpected moments in their lives. Cruz plays Janice in the film, an experienced photographer who devotes herself entirely to her professional work. One day, she accidentally becomes pregnant with a married man, which turns her life upside down. In the maternity ward, he meets Anna (Melina Smit), a young girl from a broken family who wants to forget as soon as possible the boy who impregnated her. The two women immediately form a strong bond, strengthened by the fact that they give birth at around the same time.
For her role in the film “Parallel Mothers”, the artist received her fifth Oscar nomination in her career, but lost in the competition for the statuette to Jessica Chastain (“The Eyes of Tammy Faye”). Interestingly, Cruise met the latter while filming the action movie “355”, which is about agents from different intelligence forces who unite to fight for the security of the world. Despite the other beautiful stars in the cast (Lupita Nyong'o, Diane Kruger, Fan Bingbing), the production was a financial and artistic failure, and Cruise received her second Golden Raspberry Award nomination of her career.
The actress's next three roles came from European productions. In the comedy “The Divines” by Mariano Cohen and Gaston Duprat, she played the controversial director Lola, and she had to work again with Antonio Banderas. In Juan Diego Bota's drama “24,” her character Azucena had only 24 hours to prevent her family from being evicted by a bank that wanted to seize the building. In turn, in the movie “The Enormity”, Clara lived in an unsuccessful relationship with her husband, and the unique relationship with three children became an escape for the heroine from loneliness.
The last time we saw Cruise on screen was in the production of Michael Mann's biopic “Ferrari.” In the film story of Enzo Ferrari, a former rally driver who built a giant car company, she played the wife of the main character, Laura. Her performance was one of the strongest points of the work, and although Cruise was expected to be nominated for an Oscar, she was ultimately disappointed.
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