Dutch postcard by Cineart. Penelope Cruz in Dolor y gloria / Pain and Glory (Pedro Almodovar, 2019).
Vintage photo.
Chinese postcard. Cecilia Roth, Marisa Paredes and Penelope Cruz in Todo sobre mi madre / All About My Mother (Pedro Almodóvar, 1999).
Becoming an actress to fulfil her dream of one day working with Almodovar
Penélope Cruz Sánchez was born in 1974 in Alcobendas, 20 km north of central Madrid, to Eduardo Cruz, a retailer and car mechanic, and Encarna Sánchez, a hairdresser. Her name derives from one of her parents' favourite songs, 'Penélope', composed and performed by Joan Manuel Serrat. She has two younger siblings: Mónica Cruz (1977), also an actress, and singer Eduardo Cruz (1985). As a child, she was already a compulsive performer, re-enacting TV commercials to amuse her family. She decided to focus on dance.
After studying classical ballet for nine years at Spain's National Conservatory, she continued her training under a series of prominent dancers, including Christina Rota. When she saw the film ¡Átame! / Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! (Pedro Almodóvar, 1989), starring Victoria Abril, Penelope decided to become an actress to fulfil her dream of one day working with the renowned Spanish director Almodovár. In 1989, at the age of fifteen, she was selected out of more than 300 other girls at a talent agency audition. The resulting contract landed her several roles in Spanish TV shows and music videos, which paved the way for a film career.
Her first film was El laberinto griego / The Greek Labyrinth (Rafael Alcázar, 1992). Director Bigas Luna chose her from among a multitude of actresses for Jamón, jamón (Bigas Luna, 1992). She shared the leading role with the then also newcomers Javier Bardem and Jordi Mollá. In the film, she portrayed Silvia, a young woman who is expecting her first child with a man whose mother does not approve of the relationship and attempts to sabotage it by paying Javier Bardem's character to seduce her. The erotic film was her breakthrough, and she emerged as an attractive and sensual sex-symbol. Cruz was nominated for the Goya Award, the Spanish equivalent of the Academy Award, and the Fotogramas de Plata for Best Film Actress.
She then appeared briefly in the Timothy Dalton thriller Framed (Geoffrey Sax, 1992). She showed that she was versatile in her third film, Belle Epoque (Fernando Trueba, 1992). She played the naive Luz, one of four sisters vying for the love of a handsome army deserter (Jorge Sanz) during the Second Republic in the 1930s. The film won an Oscar for Best Foreign Film and also garnered several Goyas. Her resume grew by three or four films each year, and Cruz was soon a leading lady of Spanish cinema. A small part in Carne trémula / Live Flesh (1997), starring Javier Bardem, offered her the chance to work with Pedro Almodóvar, who would later be her ticket to international fame. The same year, she was the lead actress in Abre los ojos / Open Your Eyes (Alejandro Amenábar, 1997), alongside Eduardo Noriega and Fele Martínez. The thriller was a huge hit in Spain and earned eight Goyas, though again, none for Cruz.
Her luck finally changed when the comedy La niña de tus ojos / The Girl of Your Dreams (Fernando Trueba, 1998) won her a Best Actress Goya. In 1998, Cruz appeared in her first American film as Billy Crudup's consolation-prize Mexican girlfriend in Stephen Frears' Western The Hi-Lo Country. Cruz made a few more forays into English-language film, but her first big international hit was Almodóvar's Todo sobre mi madre / All About My Mother (Pedro Almodovar, 1999), in which she played an unchaste but well-meaning, pregnant nun with AIDS. The film was a commercial and critical success internationally, winning the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in addition to the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film and the BAFTA Awards for Best Film Not in the English Language and Best Direction (Almodóvar). The film also won six Goya Awards.
Chinese postcard. Penélope Cruz and Eduardo Noriega in Abre los ojos / Open Your Eyes (Alejandro Amenábar, 1997).
Chinese postcard. Ben Kingsley and Penélope Cruz in Elegy (Isabel Coixet, 2008).
Chinese postcard. Penelope Cruz and Lluis Homar in Los abrazos rotos / Broken Embraces (Pedro Almodovar, 2009).
In demand on both sides of the Atlantic
Penelope Cruz suddenly found herself in demand on both sides of the Atlantic. Her next big project was Woman on Top (Fina Torres, 2000), an American comedy about a chef with bewitching culinary skills and a severe case of motion sickness. While in the US, she also signed up to star opposite Johnny Depp in the drug-trafficking drama Blow (Ted Demme, 2001) and opposite Matt Damon in All the Pretty Horses (Billy Bob Thornton, 2000). Cruz said she was wary of being typecast as a beautiful young damsel.
She had more success with Vanilla Sky (Cameron Crowe, 2001), which made $200 million worldwide. In this remake of Abre los ojos (1997), she played the same role as in the original. She fell in love with her co-star, Tom Cruise, and they had a relationship till 2004. Cruz had a supporting role as Chloe Sava, a patient at a mental hospital, in the Horror film Gothika (Mathieu Kassovitz, 2003) with Halle Berry and Robert Downey Jr. She co-starred with Matthew McConaughey in the adventure film Sahara (Breck Eisner, 2005), which, although it grossed a lot of money, did not cover its high cost.
Her next collaboration with Pedro Almodóvar was in Volver (2006), in which she starred as Raimunda, a working-class woman forced to go to great lengths to protect her 14-year-old daughter, Paula. The six actresses in the film shared the award for Best Female Performance at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival. Thanks to Volver, Penelope Cruz became the first Spanish actress to be nominated for a Hollywood Oscar for Best Leading Actress, although Helen Mirren won the award for The Queen. Two years later, Cruz became the first Spanish actress to win an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her part as María Elena, a mentally unstable woman in the romantic drama Vicky Cristina Barcelona (Woody Allen, 2008). Since the filming started in July 2007, a romantic relationship developed between her and her co-star Javier Bardem. Since 2010, they have been married, and they now have two children, Luna Encinas Cruz and Leo Encinas Cruz.
In 2008, Penélope Cruz played one of the central characters in Pedro Almodóvar's seventeenth film, Los abrazos rotos / Broken Embraces, a story inspired by the Film Noir of the 1950s, also starring Ángela Molina. For this role, Cruz received her sixth Goya nomination. Penélope Cruz joined the cast of the film adaptation of the musical Nine (Rob Marshall, 2009), starring Daniel Day-Lewis. For her portrayal of Carla Albanese, the protagonist's mistress, the actress was nominated for a Golden Globe, a Screen Actors Guild Award and, for the third time in four years, an Oscar for Best Female Supporting Actor. She co-starred alongside Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (Rob Marshall, 2011), the fourth instalment of the Pirates of the Caribbean saga that grossed over a billion dollars worldwide. In 2011, she also received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Around the same time, she filmed again with Woody Allen, this time in a supporting role in his magical romantic comedy To Rome with Love (2012). Along with Antonio Banderas, she made a cameo appearance in Pedro Almodóvar's farcical comedy Los amantes pasajeros / I'm So Excited (2013), which marked a return to the director's light, campy comedies of the 1980s and 1990s.
In 2015, Cruz co-produced and starred in the Spanish drama film Ma Ma, directed by Julio Medem. In it, she plays Magda, a gutsy mother and unemployed teacher, who is diagnosed with breast cancer. She landed a supporting role in Murder on the Orient Express (Kenneth Branagh, 2017), the fourth adaptation of Agatha Christie's 1934 novel of the same name, with Johnny Depp, Michelle Pfeiffer, Willem Dafoe and Judi Dench. Also successful were her new films with Pedro Almodovar, Dolor y gloria / Pain and Glory (2019) and Madres paralelas / Parallel Mothers (2021). For the latter, she received her fourth Oscar nomination. She played Janis, a professional photographer entangled in a relationship with a married man, leading to an affair and resulting in her pregnancy. Penelope Cruz is the only actress who has won acting awards from the five main European Film Academies: three Goyas (the Spanish Oscar), one David di Donatello (the Italian Oscar), one Bafta (the British Oscar) one Cesar (the French Oscar) and two Felix (the European Oscar) as well as from the USA Motion Picture Academy (one Oscar).
Dutch poster postcard by Boomerang, Amsterdam. Penelope Cruz and Johnny Depp in the crime drama Blow (Ted Demme, 2001).
Dutch poster postcard by Boomerang, Amsterdam. Penelope Cruz in Los abrazos rotos / Broken Embraces (Pedro Almodovar, 2009).
Sources: Wikipedia (Dutch, Spanish and English) and IMDb.
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