Penélope Cruz’s destiny was to become a star. It was written that that girl who grew up in her mother’s hair salon in Alcobendas surrounded by clients – “that place was like a psychologist for them, they all shared her secrets; Her behavior captivated me” – she would be the first Spanish actress to win an Oscar (for Vicky Cristina Barcelona in 2008).
This Sunday, Penelope turns 50 and has a lot to celebrate. “It’s something important and beautiful, and I really want to celebrate it with all my friends. It means that I am here and I am healthy and it is a reason to have a party,” declared the artist in a recent interview with Elle magazine, in which she also revealed that she suffers from emotional hypersensitivity: “I am lucky to be like this, even if I suffer or feel more things. It is hypersensitivity in all senses: visual, to sound, to people’s feelings. It is one of the main topics I deal with in therapy: how to work on balance to stay well without making those feelings my own.”
The eldest daughter of the Cruz Sánchez family was determined to fight for her dream: to be an actress. Her face became known before her name. She was 14 years old when she starred in Mecano’s video clip La Fuerza del Destino. There she met the musician Nacho Cano, her first boyfriend. Their love lasted six years. At that time she worked as a television presenter on the Telecinco program La quinta march, alongside Jesús Vázquez.
He made his film debut with Bigas Luna’s film Jamón jamón, where he met Javier Bardem. The actress has confessed on occasion that bursting onto the screens with such an erotic role at the age of 17 marked her professional beginnings, so she avoided highly sexualized roles.
Then came Belle Epoque, La celestina and Abre los ojos, among others. In 1997 she released Carne Trémula, her first film with Pedro Almodóvar. Thanks to the director from La Mancha, the actress was a mother in fiction long before becoming a mother in real life.
“At my age, 80% of the characters I play are about motherhood or divorce, abandonment, characters who didn’t want to have children or lost them. I have played mothers since I was very young. Pedro always saw me as a mother. We’ve known each other since he was 17 years old. He would see me talking to strangers just to look at his baby. He always noticed that strong and inevitable instinct in me. Since I was little, I knew I wanted to have children, but I preferred to wait until I felt she was ready. “I was sure it would be the most important thing I would do in my life.”
At the age of 24 he won his first Goya for The Girl in Your Eyes, by Fernando Trueba. Six years after her debut, she embarked on the American adventure.
Upon landing in Hollywood, he filmed Vanilla Sky, the remake of Amenábar’s Abre los ojos, alongside Tom Cruise. They were credited with a romance that lasted three years. At that time she also filmed with Matthew McConaughey, with whom she also had a love story while filming Sahara.
But the man of her life had already crossed her path a few years before. Woody Allen reunited them in the 2008 film Vicky Cristina Barcelona.
At the end of filming, Javier Bardem decided to take the step: “I thought, ‘Oh, I haven’t told him anything,’ and on the last day I told him: ‘Hey, by the way, I like you.’ She thought: ‘It’s about time!’ And then it was ‘hello’, ‘hello’, and now we are married and have two children,” the actor explained during an interview. During filming, his first real kiss also arose: “We kissed, and we went on, and we went on, and before we knew it, the crew was gone,” Bardem said.
Penelope and Javier married in 2010 on their friend Johnny Depp’s island in the Bahamas. In 2011 they had their first child, Leo; and two years later Luna was born. While she leads a family life away from the spotlight, dealing with two preteens, her international recognition continues to grow.
