A childhood as a ballerina.
Meeting her husband while she was still a teenager.
Dating some of the most handsome men in Hollywood.
Keep watching to see how Penélope Cruz's lifelong transformation has been filled with
plenty of glamour.
Born in Spain in 1974, Penélope Cruz comes from a tight-knit family.
Her father Eduardo worked as a mechanic, while her mom Encarna was a hairdresser.
Penelope is the oldest of their three children.
Her sister Mónica is three years younger.
She's a dancer and actress who appeared as her sister's body double in Pirates of the
Caribbean: On Stranger Tides.
The sisters have also worked together designing clothing collections.
Their brother Eduardo is 11 years younger than Penélope, and he's involved in the music
side of the entertainment business.
He began composing when he was 14, and he particularly enjoys electronic music and film
composition.
Like his sisters, he also worked on Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, when
he collaborated with that film's composer, Hans Zimmer.
Since then, Eduardo has composed music for movies, commercials, video games, and more.
He also dated actress Eva Longoria after she was divorced from Tony Parker.
When Penélope Cruz was four years old, her parents enrolled her in ballet classes so
that she would have a place to use her energy productively.
"I had too much energy, so my parents decided to put me in ballet school.
Thank God, because I didn't know what to do with myself."
Cruz credits her time as a ballerina for helping her to prepare for the often grueling conditions
that come with working on movie sets.
As she told 60 Minutes in 2010,
"If I hadn't had the discipline of all those years in the dance world, it would have been
much, much tougher [...] I mean, it — it goes too far sometimes.
I mean, I used to take my toenails — they would die from dancing — so I would just
take the whole toenail and throw it away, and not feel anything.
But I loved it."
Then when Cruz was 14, she saw the Pedro Almodóvar film Tie Me Up!
Tie Me Down!, which had such a profound effect on her that she decided to get an agent that
very day.
She attended a cattle call hosted by Katrina Bayonas, who initially refused to let Cruz
audition because she was so young.
But after returning several times and pleading her case, Bayonas finally agreed.
Cruz channeled her frustration with Bayonas into an improvised scene in which she played
an angry young woman.
Blown away by her performance, Bayonas decided to sign her as a client.
Out of the 300 women that had vied for representation, Cruz was the only one she signed.
It wasn't long after landing an agent that
Penélope Cruz started booking movie roles.
One of them was the romantic tragicomedy Jamón, Jamón.
Still just a teenager at the time, she played a role that many considered quite scandalous.
And one of her costars was none other than her future husband, Javier Bardem.
As he recalled to GQ in 2017,
"She was underage.
Nothing happened.
There was obvious chemistry between us.
I mean, it's all there on film; it's like a document of our passion.
One day we're going to have to show the kids — imagine!
'Mummy, Daddy, what did you do in the movies together?'
Well, my children, you should celebrate this movie as you're here because of it!"
Cruz and Bardem subsequently remained friends, although they didn't work together again until
2008's Vicky Cristina Barcelona.
As the end of that latter shoot drew closer, Bardem began to worry that a romance might
never happen, but things progressed at a wrap party and they've been together ever since.
They married quietly in the Bahamas in 2010 and have continued to collaborate on screen.
"You and Penelope have performed together.
You have a life onstage and offstage together.
Is that hard?"
"It is weird.
It is weird."
Penélope Cruz counts fellow movie star Salma Hayek as one of her closest friends.
The two have known each other since they worked on the 2006 film Bandidas together.
According to Cruz, their relationship got off to a great start when Hayek insisted that
Cruz stay with her and not at a hotel.
As Cruz recounted on The Ellen DeGeneres Show,
"I was coming here for two months and I didn't know anyone here.
And she picked me up and said, 'You're not going to the hotel.
You're coming to my house because this is hard at the beginning and you're going to
feel very lonely.'"
Hayek's hospitality sparked the beginning of a sister-like bond that continues to this
day.
During a TimesTalks interview in 2016, Cruz recounted the night when Hayek was getting
ready to attend a premiere and the power went out in her house and she needed to have her
hair done.
So she called Cruz, who had spent her childhood in the salon with her mom, so that she could
come over and do her hair by candlelight.
Clearly, that's a tight bond.
As Penélope Cruz tells it, the most important creative relationship of her life is her longtime
partnership with filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar.
"He can imagine myself doing things that I, maybe I cannot even see myself doing out of
fear."
Cruz's desire to work with Almodóvar was first sparked when she saw his film Tie Me
Up!
Tie Me Down!
when she was a teenager.
As she recounted to TimesTalks,
"It was a life-changing experience.
I came out of the theater.
I took a walk by myself and I decided in that moment to try to become an actress, just to
give it a try."
After Almodóvar saw the first two movies that Cruz was in, he called her and they began
their decades-long collaboration.
They first worked together on 1997's Live Flesh and most recently on 2021's Parallel
Mothers, and in between they also hooked up for All About My Mother, Volver, Broken Embraces,
I'm So Excited!, and Pain and Glory.
Before marrying Javier Bardem in 2010, Penélope Cruz had some notable romantic relationships
with other well-known movie stars.
For example, she and Tom Cruise met in 2000 during the production of Vanilla Sky and then
started dating the following year after his marriage to Nicole Kidman ended.
They ultimately split up in 2004.
A source close to the couple told People Magazine at the time,
"The relationship just ran its course and they decided not to be girlfriend and boyfriend
anymore.
Through most of the relationship, they were both shooting movies in separate parts of
the world."
Cruz and Cruise maintained their friendship, and she even met his daughter Suri when she
was a baby.
The following year, Cruz started dating Matthew McConaughey after they met on the set of the
action-adventure flick Sahara.
They broke up in 2006, and although there was speculation that he began dating his future
wife Camila Alves when he was still with Cruz, he's denied that.
Penélope Cruz has been a staple at the Academy Awards for many years now.
Her first trip down the red carpet occurred in 1994, when Belle Époque, a film she co-starred
in, won for Best Foreign Language Film.
Then in 2000, she was tapped to present the award for the same category and had the honor
of reading long-time friend Pedro Almodóvar's name when she opened up the envelope and discovered
that he'd won for his film All About My Mother.
Cruz was also on hand when her husband-to-be Javier Bardem collected the statue in 2008
for Best Supporting Actor for No Country for Old Men.
The following year, she won herself in the Best Supporting Actress category for Vicky
Cristina Barcelona, thereby becoming the first Spanish actress to receive the coveted award.
As she said during her acceptance speech, "I grew up in a place called Alcobendas, where
this was not a very realistic dream."
She also joked that she might be the first person to faint right there on the stage.
Then in 2022, Cruz and Bardem were both nominated once again, he for Being the Ricardos and
she for Parallel Mothers, though neither won.
Still, it was nice for both of them to be recognized at the same time.
As Bardem noted to Deadline,
"We were on the sofa, cuddled together waiting to see what was going to happen.
When they announced my nomination first, I was very excited but it wasn’t a true celebration
until we heard she was also nominated."
"The fact that we are celebrating both nominations in the same year, it's something that makes
it way more special, as you can imagine."
It took a while for Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem to go from meeting each other to becoming
husband and wife.
Sparks really began to fly between the two on the set of Vicky Cristina Barcelona in
2007.
As Bardem recounted to GQ in 2017,
"Neither of us would make the first move.
I don't know if we were shy or trying to be too professional.
Anyway, it got to the very last day of filming and nothing had happened.
So I thought, 'F---!
We better get drunk!'
Luckily a friend of ours threw a wrap party and, well, the rest is history.
Thank god!"
By 2009, they were engaged.
They wed in a quiet ceremony in The Bahamas the following year amid rumors that she was
pregnant.
Now more than a decade into their marriage, Cruz and Bardem prefer to keep their relationship
private.
But we do know that in 2011, they welcomed their son Leo, and in 2013, they welcomed
their daughter Luna.
They're raising those kids in the capital of Madrid in their native country of Spain.
As Cruz noted to The Telegraph in 2019,
"Even if you think you know what it's going to be, it's so amazing what happens when you
see your kid for the first time: you then see the world differently for the rest of
your life, because you're always going to think about somebody else first."
Since having children, Cruz has cut down on her workload and chooses her projects more
carefully.
Before becoming a parent, she used to make four or five movies annually, but now she
takes on only a couple of projects per year.
In 2018, Karl Lagerfeld, long-time creative director for Chanel, chose Penélope Cruz
to be a brand ambassador.
Cruz, who attended her first Chanel show in 1999 and had worn many of his designs in the
intervening years, was delighted at the opportunity.
As she told Women's Wear Daily,
"It's such an iconic brand and Karl is a genius, and I've been admiring everything he's done
since I was a little girl, so it's such a pleasure working with him.
He's like the king of fashion and we had a really, really interesting photo shoot, so
to be in front of his camera is an adventure."
"How was it to work with him?"
"It was … a great experience."
When Lagerfeld died the following year, scores of stars showed up at Paris Fashion Week to
pay tribute to him and walk in his final runway show.
Cruz, who was featured in a stunning black and white photographic campaign shot by Lagerfeld
himself, was among the big names who participated in the show, as she carried a white rose on
her walk down the runway in tribute to the designer.
In 2022, Penélope Cruz announced the formation of her new production company, Moonlyon.
It was formed in partnership with The Mediapro Studio, a Spanish media group, and it will
focus on producing various types of content for both film and TV.
Mediapro has offices all over the world, and it's considered a significant force within
Latin America.
The company has previously been involved in projects featuring both Cruz and her husband,
Javier Bardem.
As Cruz announced in a statement,
"With more demand than ever for stories from diverse backgrounds and new parts of the world,
I am very happy to be able to continue my work as a producer with a company that I know
intimately and that has valuable international positioning experience.
Our goal is for Moonlyon to become a quality benchmark with a personality of its own."
It sounds like Penelope Cruz has plenty left cooking, and we can't wait to see what she
has in store for us!
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