Best Known As: Sultry Spanish Oscar-winner for Vicky Cristina Barcelona
A sultry and sometimes playful Spanish actress, Penelope Cruz became famous internationally when she played the motion-sick heroine in the 2000 film Woman on Top. She was already a star in Spain: she had a major role in the Oscar-winning 1992 film Belle Epoque, then began a long association with Spanish director Pedro Almodovar. Her films with Almodovar include Live Flesh (1997), All About My Mother (1999) and Volver (2006). In Hollywood her most prominent roles have been in the westerns The Hi-Lo Country (1998) and All the Pretty Horses (with Matt Damon, 2000), the druglord drama Blow (with Johnny Depp, 2001), and Vanilla Sky (2001), in which she co-starred with her real-life boyfriend at the time, Tom Cruise. She won an Oscar as best supporting actress for her role as a fiery Spanish artist in Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008, also starring Javier Bardem).
Cruz has the number "883" tattoed on her right ankle. When Newsweek magazine asked if it was true she had the tattoo, Cruz replied "It is true, but I never say why"... Cruz donated her salary from The Hi-Lo Country to Mother Teresa's charity... Cruz and Cruise dated from 2001 through 2004]... Cruz is occasionally confused with the Mexican actress Salma Hayek.
Career Highlights: All About My Mother, Live Flesh, Open Your Eyes
First Major Screen Credit: Belle Epoque (1992)
Biography
One of Spain's foremost leading ladies of the 1990s, Penélope Cruz has managed to make her mark with international audiences as well. Born in Madrid on April 28, 1974, Cruz was one of three children of a merchant and a hairdresser. After years of intensive study in ballet and jazz, she broke into acting in 1992. That year, she had starring roles in Jamón Jamón and Belle Epoque, two very disparate films. The former cast her as the desperately poor daughter of a village prostitute, while the latter featured her as one of four lusty daughters of a wealthy man in pre-Franco Spain. Belle Epoque proved to be a huge success, winning nine Goya Awards (the Spanish equivalent of an Academy Award) and an Oscar for Best Foreign Film. Its success gave Cruz a dose of international recognition, and after starring in a number of Spanish films, she enhanced this recognition in 1997 with the Sundance entry Abre los Ojos (Open Your Eyes). That same year, she had a brief but memorable role in Pedro Almodóvar's Carne Trémula (Live Flesh).
In 1998, Cruz had her first starring role in an English-language film, playing Billy Crudup's Mexican-American love interest in Stephen Frears' The Hi-Lo Country. She had another go at English later that year in the Spanish-British romantic comedy Twice Upon a Yesterday, which cast her as a Spanish barmaid living in London. In 1999, she returned to Spain to collaborate once again with Almodóvar on Todo Sobre Mi Madre (All About My Mother), a wildly acclaimed film that premiered at Cannes that year.
The next two years would prove to be a critical turning point in both Cruz's personal and professional life, with increasingly visible roles in large-scale Hollywood productions as well as a developing relationship with one Tinseltown's most popular leading men. Gaining notice for her roles in All the Pretty Horses in 2000 and Blow the following year, it appeared as if Cruz's career had suddenly kicked into overdrive. After starring alongside Nicolas Cage in the underperforming Captain Corelli's Mandolin in 2001, Cruz dove back into familiar territory with director Cameron Crowe's remake of Abre los Ojos, Vanilla Sky (2001). Developing a close relationship with lead Tom Cruise as his much publicized breakup with Nicole Kidman drew to a close, the pair soon found themselves the center of considerable paparazzi attention as they became Hollywood's hottest new couple.
While "Cruz & Cruise" outlasted most celebrity couplings born on movie sets -- even generating wedding talk -- the duo went their separate ways in 2004. Perhaps not coincidentally, Cruz's career took a backseat to her paramour's while she was dating him; between 2001 and 2004, most of her roles were either minor ones in uncelebrated American indies (Waking Up in Reno, Masked and Anonymous, Noel) or meatier ones in foreign films that failed to gain traction in the States (Fanfan la Tulipe, Don't Move, Bandidas). Luckily, the actress rebounded with a performance thought by many critics to be the best of her career, when she re-teamed with one of her earliest champions, Pedro Almodóvar, for his nostalgic, bittersweet Volver in 2006. Warm, witty, and biting, Cruz's performance kept her name in the running for many year-end awards, even garnering her her first Oscar nomination for Best Actress.
In 2008, Cruz earned strong reviews for her work in Elegy, but it was her turn in Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona that garnered her Best Supporting Actress nods from the Hollywood Foreign Press, the Screen Actors Guild, and the Academy. ~ Rebecca Flint Marx, All Movie Guide
Penélope Cruz Sánchez was born in Alcobendas, Community of Madrid, Spain, the daughter of Encarna Sánchez, a hairdresser and personal manager, and Eduardo Cruz, a retailer and auto mechanic.[3][4] As a toddler, she was already a compulsive performer, re-enacting TV commercials for her family's amusement. Initially, Cruz focused on dance. After studying classical ballet for nine years at Spain's National Conservatory, she continued her training under a series of prominent dancers. She received three years of Spanish Ballet training with Ángela Garrido. She also had jazz dance training with Raúl Caballero and studied at Cristina Rota (mother of Juan Diego Botto) school in Madrid. At 15, however, she followed another calling after beating more than 300 other girls at a talent agency audition.[citation needed]
Career
Cruz first achieved fame when she appeared in the video for "La fuerza del destino" for the Spanish synthpop group Mecano. She later started a relationship with Nacho Cano, a member of the group.[5] A TV presenter for the teen-oriented program La Quinta Marcha,[4] she also had early exposure in Série Rose, an erotic French TV serial.[6] In one episode she played the role of a blind prostitute and in another played a young noblewoman pretending to be a young nobleman in a comedy of errors. She also directed Nacho Cano's video of "El waltz de los locos", in 1994.
For Cruz, the early 2000s were a period of mediocre reviews and mixed commercial success. In late 2001, she appeared in the film Vanilla Sky, the Hollywood remake of Open Your Eyes. Returning to Europe, in 2004, Cruz learned Italian (she already spoke Spanish, French, and English) to star in the film Don't Move. She earned critical praise for her role and earned the coveted David di Donatello award, the Italian equivalent of the Oscar.
In May 2007, it was announced that Penélope and her sister Mónica would be designing a 25-piece collection for the Barcelona-based fashion chain Mango.[9] On July 7, 2007, Cruz presented at Live Earth. In late 2007, she starred in the Jaume de Laiguana-directed video for her brother's first single, named "Cosas que contar", along with her friend Mía Maestro and her sister Mónica. Cruz had previously shown a keen interest in fashion and is a model for L'Oréal and its "Telescopic" mascara.
In 2008, Cruz appeared with Sir Ben Kingsley in fellow Spaniard Isabel Coixet's film Elegy, earning her critical praise for an English-speaking role. The film was based on the Philip Roth story The Dying Animal. She was nominated for a Golden Satellite award for her performance. Later that year, she starred in Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona as María Elena, Javier Bardem's mentally unstable ex-wife. Her performance received wide critical praise. For the role, Cruz received her second Academy Award Nomination, and later won for Best Supporting Actress,[10] making her only the second Spanish actor to win an Academy Award, a year after her boyfriend, Javier Bardem, won for No Country for Old Men. She became the first Spanish actress to win an Academy Award, and one of the only actors besides Robert De Niro and Ingrid Bergman to win the Oscar for a role speaking two different languages. Besides the Oscar, Cruz won the BAFTA, the Independent Spirit Award, the National Board of Review Award, and the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Supporting Actress in Vicky Cristina Barcelona. She also earned Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild nominations for her role.
Cruz has a younger brother, Eduardo, a singer, and a younger sister, Mónica.
Cruz claims to have been a vegetarian since 2000.[11] She speaks four languages: Spanish, Italian, French and English. Cruz has also donated a considerable amount of money and time to charity; in 1997 she volunteered in Uganda for two months.
Cruz was raised as a Roman Catholic, but now feels closest to Buddhism.[12] After appearing in Vanilla Sky with Tom Cruise, they had a three-year relationship which ended in January 2004. During that time, she and Cruise were seen visiting several Church of Scientology locations in Hollywood, and there was published speculation that Cruise had convinced Cruz to join the church.[13]
After filming Sahara in February 2005, she began dating actor Matthew McConaughey. In May 2006, they released a joint statement to People, saying that they "have decided to take time off as a couple." Later that year they announced that they were "no longer intimate and separating was the best thing to do at this time".[14] She has been dating actor Javier Bardem since 2007; the two appeared together in Jamón, Jamón, Live Flesh and 2008's Vicky Cristina Barcelona.[15]
In April 2007 Cruz, who was single at the time, stated that she would like to have children one day and she feels the need to adopt. "Of course I want to have kids," Cruz, told the Spanish edition of Marie Claire in its April issue. "I want to have my own kids, but also adopt. For a while I've had the feeling that my life won't be complete if I don't adopt".[16]
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