november-2009

PHOTOGRAPHS BY FABRICE TROMBERT/RETNA (LEFT); EMILIO PEREDA & PAOLA ARDIZZONI/SONY PICTURES CLASSICS (RIGHT)
THERE’S A LONGSTANDING L
HOLLYWOOD
superstition that th winning an Academy Award for Best
Supporting Actress Ac is the career kiss of death. Mira
Sorvino has ne never rivaled her winning role in Mighty
Aphrodite, Catherine Cath Zeta-Jones hasn’t had a big hit
since Chicago, Chicago, and Renee Zellweger has watched her
movies tank consistently co since Cold Mountain.
But, for better be or worse, Penelope Cruz doesn’t
need to worry about the so-called “Oscar curse.” Before
the 2009 win for fo her role as mentally unstable artist
Maria Maria Elena in
Woody Allen’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona,
the actress known kno as the “Spanish Enchantress” had
never appeared
in anything resembling a box office
blockbuster—which blockbuster—w is a fairly impressive feat when you
consider how many m high-profile roles she’s managed
to land opposite opposit A-list stars like Matt Damon (All
The Pretty Hor Horses, 2000), Johnny Depp (Blow, 2001),
Nicolas Cage (Captain ( Corelli’s Mandolin, 2001), Tom
Cruise (Vanilla Sky, 2001) and Matthew McConaughey
(Sahara, 2005). 2005) The fact is, despite stellar starring roles
in in numerous foreign fo films, Cruz is perhaps best known
in the US for he her relationships with her leading men,
including Cruise,
McConaughey and current beau
Javier Bardem. Bardem.
Where other actresses hav have had to worry about
maintaining momentum in the wake of winning Oscar
gold, the 35-year-old Cruz approaches the Nov. 25
release of the eagerly anticipated Nine simply looking
for a Hollywood hit in which she doesn’t appear as the
voice of a crime-fighting guinea pig (see: last summer’s
kiddie flick G-Force … or, better yet, don’t). Yet Cruz
herself doesn’t seem all that concerned with box office
returns. “When I started,” she says, “my biggest aspiration
was just to be able to be an actress with work. The
best situation I could imagine was to be able to choose
what I wanted to do. That counts more for me than the
concept of stardom.”
BORN PENÉLOPE CRUZ SÁNCHEZ IN MADRID,
she began her career as a ballet dancer with Spain’s
National Conservatory before besting 300 other girls
in a talent agency audition at the age of 15. Roles in
Spanish TV shows and music videos led to film acting,
including a role in 1992’s Belle Epoque. But it was her
work with w Spanish indie auteur Pedro Almodóvar that
established establish Cruz’s thespian cred in Hollywood.
“I mmet
Pedro when I was 18 and I was too young
for the script s that he was writing,” she says. “But he
told me,
‘I will write something else for you,’ and now
we’ve made ma four films together. We became friends
from om the
beginning and know each other really well.
We share
a lot of our lives with each other, and I count
him mason as one of my closest friends.”
That friendship has produced some of the best
work of their respective careers, including 1998’s Live
Flesh, 1999’s All About My Mother (which won the
Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film), 2006’s Volver
(for which Cruz earned her first Oscar nomination)
and their latest collaboration, Broken Embraces, which
was nominated for a Golden Palm Award at the
Cannes Film Festival and will be released next month.
Broken Embraces casts Cruz as Lena, an aspiring
actress who suddenly finds herself the muse for visionary
director Mateo Blanco (Lluís Homar). Though the
film noir-style story of passion, jealousy, obsession and
guilt is a work of fiction, it’s not difficult to imagine the
loving connection between Lena and Mateo mirroring
the one between Penelope and her mentor, Almodóvar.
“It is a very different type of relationship,” Cruz
says, noting the romantic nature of Lena and Mateo’s
partnership. “But I used a lot of my relationship with
Pedro in playing the role. Emotionally, he is somebody
that I connect with, somebody I care about. A lot of
times when we were rehearsing, Pedro would play
Lluís’ role, and when he and I were acting together it
helped me understand our relationship.”
Cruz readily admits that this connection between
them allows Almodóvar to bring out her peak performances.
“I think it’s because he’s very specific and very
honest, and he sees everything,” she says. “On and off the
set, you cannot lie to him, and I know he can’t lie to me
“ I count him
as one
of my
closest
friends.”
COVER STORY
Cruz with director Pedro Almodóvar
while filming Broken Embraces
NOVEMBER 2009 GO MAGAZINE
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