Spain’s #1 leading lady Penélope Cruz was inspired by Victoria Abril’s performance in “¡Átame!” to become an actress, and that film’s director, Pedro Almodóvar, would later become her ticket to international stardom. Her Hollywood career has been nearly as full-bodied as her work in Spain, and she is now recognized as one of the world’s top young actresses.
Cruz was born in Madrid on April 28, 1974, and began entertaining as an accomplished ballet dancer, training for nine years at Madrid’s Conservatorio Nacional. She dropped out of secondary school at 15 to pursue her acting career, and first found success in the 1992 film “Jamón, jamón”. That same year she was featured in the Foreign Language Film Oscar winner “Belle epoque”, and continued to receive major roles in Spanish films. Her first feature with Almodóvar was 1997’s “Live Flesh”, released the same year as her turn in “Abre los ojos (Open Your Eyes)”, a sci-fi/thriller that was nominated for a slew of Goyas, the Spanish equivalent of the Oscars. Almodóvar’s “All About My Mother” rocketed her to stardom overseas after that film became her second to win the Foreign Language Film Oscar.
The gorgeous Cruz quickly earned leading roles in major American productions, appearing with Woody Harrelson and Billy Crudup in Stephen Frears’s “The Hi-Lo Country” and starring with Matt Damon in Billy Bob Thornton’s underrated “All the Pretty Horses”. Still a huge star in Spain, she began alternating native productions with her Hollywood commitments, the latter of which included co-starring with Johnny Depp in “Blow”, with Nicolas Cage in “Captain Corelli’s Mandolin”, and with Tom Cruise in “Vanilla Sky”. The latter film, a remake of “Abre los ojos” in which Cruz reprised her role, sparked a three-year relationship between Cruise and Cruz, putting the unassuming Spanish beauty on the A-list of celebrity gossipmongers. Her career took a slight downturn around this time, coinciding with her frustration at constantly being offered boring eye-candy roles, a problem that has also faced Cruz’s close friend Salma Hayek.
The Cruise-Cruz pair called it quits in 2004, and Penélope soon began dating her “Sahara” co-star Matthew McConaughey, a relationship that recently ended. Lately Cruz has begun receiving the artistic recognition she deserves in America, as she has become a Best Actress Oscar frontrunner for her role in Almodóvar’s “Volver”. A tragicomic homage to the lives of working-class women in Madrid, “Volver” is the best film of 2006, a beautiful and imaginative human drama that is pure Almodóvar. 2007 will see Cruz in the intriguing “Manolete” with Adrien Brody and “The Good Night” with Gwyneth Paltrow.