Facts
With her expressive brown eyes, lustrous dark hair
and flawless olive skin, Penelope Cruz
burst on the scene as a teenager lending
an air of sultry innocence and a flair for
drollery and nudity as the
sexy ingenue in Bigas Lunas'
American art-house hit Jamon Jamon (1992).
She solidified her status as a rising star
playing the virginal Luz in Ferdinand Trueba's
1994 Oscar-winning Belle Epoch.
Born in Madrid, Cruz began
studying dance as a teenager. At age 15, she
auditioned for a talent agent who signed her immediately.
Within two years, she had segued to the big
screen in El Laberinto Griego/The Greek Labyrinth
(1992) before her breakthrough in Jamon Jamon.
As a rising star in her native Spain, Cruz
got to work with top directors and played
myriad parts ranging from the Virgin Mary in Per Amore, Solo per amore/For Love, Only for Love (1993) to a medieval bride in Celestina (1996)
to a pregnant prostitute in Pedro Almodovar's
Live Flesh (1997) to the supportive girlfriend
of a man disfigured in car accident
in Alejandro Amenabar's Open Your Eyes
(1998). She re-teamed with both Trueba
and Almodovar for two her best screen performances to date.
Purportedly based on a true incident, Trueba's
The Girl of My Dreams/La Nina de tus ojos
(1998) allowed the actress to pay homage
to her grandmother in her portrayal
of an Adalusian cabaret singer trapped in Nazi Germany
who catches the attention of propaganda minister
Josef Goebbels. Almodovar
once again had her playing a woman with
child in the Cannes favorite Todo sobre
mi madre/All About My Mother (1999) although this time in
a sly bit of irony, the fragile beauty portrayed a nun.
Attempting to broaden her employment
opportunities, Cruz began acting in English
in the British mini-series Framed (1993). She went on to appear
as the sweet charge of an Irish governess
in the period drama Talk of Angels
(shot in 1994; released theatrically in 1998) and
lent her luminous looks to the thankless role
of the Mexican girlfriend of Billy Crudup's
cattle rancher in Stephen Frears' The Hi-Lo Country (1998).
Cruz also played a bookish barmaid
who catches the eye of Scotsman Douglas Henshall
in the fantasy romantic comedy Twice Upon a Yesterday/If Only/The Man
with Rain in His Shoe (1998). The actress' status as a rising international star was firmed when she landed the female lead opposite
Matt Damon in
Billy Bob Thornton's screen
version of All the Pretty Horses
and the lead as a South American chef
coping with her newfound success when
she lands a TV show in the USA
in the comedy Woman on Top (both 2000).
Cruz would soon gain ground in
Hollywood with roles as sexy, exotic types
in Blow (2001) with Johnny Depp and Captain Corelli's Mandolin (2001) with Nicolas Cage,
but it would be a role opposite superstar
Tom Cruise--both on screen and
off--that would propel the actress to the forefront of
Hollywood. After being naturally cast as
Cruise's love interest Sofia
in Vanilla Sky (2001),
writer-director Cameron Crowe's
intriguing but not-quite-fulfilling Americanized
reworking of Open Your Eyes
(Cruz played the same role
she did in the original), Cruz
embarked on a highly publicized relationship
with her world-famous leading man,
shortly after his notoriously
acrimonious split with Nicole
Kidman. The couple was catapulated
to the front of the headlines, and Cruz became
a well-known personality. Her noteriety did not immediately
translate into more film roles, however;
in 2002 she appeared briefly in the
aimable but unremarkable comedy Waking Up In Reno
opposite Thornton, and in 2003 she delivered
a nice turn as Chloe a mental
patient who believes she consorts with
demons and begins to suck her former
therapist (Halle Berry)
into her dark world in the otherwise preposterous
thriller Gothika. She then played support
to Charlize Theron
and Stuart Townsend in the wartime melodrama
Head in the Clouds (2004) as a bohemian drawn into a strange menage.
The actress then took on the role of Eva Rojas,
the paramour of master explorer Dirk Pitt (
Matthew McConaughey) in Sahara (2005),
the Paramount Pictures adaptation
of Clive Cussler's bestselling adventure novel,
and interest in the film was fanned by
the off-screen romance between Cruz and her leading man.
