Penélope
Cruz
Will success
spoil Penélope Cruz? At age 26 she seems to be on target to become
a major Hollywood star. A ravishingly beautiful woman, Cruz has established
herself as Spain's most popular actress of her generation. Winning her
country's coveted Goya Award as best actress last year is already a
powerful indication that Cruz is destined to enjoy the kind of extraordinary
career -in Spain and abroad- that no other Spanish actress has ever
achieved.Last March, Cruz was seen with fellow Spaniard Antonio Banderas
presenting the Oscar for best foreign film to Spanish director Pedro
Almodóvar, for Todo Sobre mi Madre, which coincidentally starred
her in one of her most difficult roles to date.
In addition,
she's now appearing in Woman on Top, the romantic comedy about a Brazilian
chef who becomes a famous TV personality because of her brilliant cooking
and on-screen charisma.Penélope Cruz will also be seen in Billy
Bob Thorton's new film, All the Pretty Horses, where she plays an aristocratic
Mexican woman who falls in love with an American drifter played by Matt
Damon. Persistent rumors indicate the romance is not fictitious at all.At
press time, she was negotiating to star with Tom Cruise in Paramount
Pictures' Vanilla Sky, and had recently completed Captain Correlli's
Mandolin for Universal Pictures/Miramax.
Her list
of Spanish credits also include Jamón, Jamón; the Oscar-winning
foreign film Belle Epoque, the film that turned her into Spain's leading
female actress; and Almodóvar's All About My Mother, where she
plays a nun who falls in love with an AIDS-infected man and then dies
from the disease. Penélope Cruz Sánchez was born in Madrid,
Spain, on April 28, 1974. Her father, Eduardo, was a retailer, and her
mother a hairdresser. They named their daughter Penélope after
a song written by Spanish singer/composer Joan Manuel Serrat. The couple
has two other children, Eduardo Jr. and Mónica. Penélope
had a romance with Nacho Cano, member of the group Mecano, with whom
she lived until they broke up and she moved in with fellow actor Gigi
Sarrasola, but that romance also enden.
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