Penelope Cruz Biography

Penélope Cruz Sánchez (born April 28, 1974) is a Spanish actress. Signed by an agent at age 15, she made her acting debut at 16 on television and her feature film debut the following year in Jamón, jamón (1992), to critical acclaim. Her subsequent roles in the 1990s and 2000s included Open Your Eyes (1997), The Hi-Lo Country (1999), The Girl of Your Dreams (2000) and Woman on Top (2000). Penelope Cruz achieved recognition for her lead roles in Vanilla Sky and Blow. Both films were released in 2001 and were commercially successful worldwide.

Penelope Cruz

In the 2000s Penelope Cruz has appeared in films from a wide range of genres, including the comedy Waking Up in Reno (2002), the thriller Gothika (2003), the Christmas movie Noel (2004), the action adventure Sahara (2005), the animated G-Force and the musical drama Nine. Her most notable films to date are Volver (2006), for which she earned Golden Globe and Academy Award nominations, and Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008), for which she received an Academy Award. She was the first Spanish actress in history to receive an Academy Award and the first Spanish actress to receive a star at the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Penelope Cruz has modeled for companies such as Mango, Ralph Lauren and L'Oréal. Penélope and her younger sister Mónica Cruz have designed items for Mango. She has donated both her time and money to charities. Cruz has volunteered in Uganda and India, where she spent one week working for Mother Teresa; she donated her salary from The Hi-Lo Country to help fund the late nun's mission.

Early life
Penélope Cruz Sánchez was born in Alcobendas, Community of Madrid, Spain, the daughter of Encarna Sánchez, a hairdresser and personal manager, and Eduardo Cruz, a retailer and auto mechanic. She was raised Roman Catholic. Throughout her childhood, Cruz lived in Alcobendas, a working-class town, although she spent "a lot" of time at her grandmother's apartment. Cruz is the oldest of three siblings; she has a younger brother, Eduardo, who is a singer, and a younger sister, Mónica, who is an actress. She has said that she had a happy childhood, and Charlie Rose of 60 Minutes described Cruz's childhood as a "simple life." In a foreshadowing way, Cruz remembers when she was four years old, "playing with some friends and being aware that I was acting as I was playing with them—I would think of a character and pretend to be someone else."

Initially, Penelope Cruz had no ambition to be an actress and focused on dance, having studied classical ballet for nine years at Spain's National Conservatory. She received three years of Spanish ballet training and four years of theater at Cristina Rota's New York school. She commented that "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," however, ballet instilled in her discipline that would be important in her future acting career. She became a fan of movies at age 10 or 11. With no movie theaters nearby, her first relationship with cinema was watching movies on Betamax. Her father bought this "Betamax machine", of which Cruz recalls that it was very rare to own one in her neighborhood at the time.

When Penelope Cruz was a teenager, she began having an interest in acting after seeing the film Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! by Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar. She began doing casting calls for an agent, but was rejected multiple times because the agent felt that she was too young. Cruz commented on the experience that "I was very extroverted as a kid. I was studying when I was in high school at night, I was in ballet and I was doing castings. I looked for an agent and she sent me away three times because I was a little girl but I kept coming back. I'm still with her after all these years." In 1989, at the age of 15, Cruz won an audition at a talent agency over more than 300 other girls. In 1999, Katrina Bayonas, Cruz's agent, commented, "She was absolutely magic at the audition. It was obvious there was something very impressive about this kid. She was very green, but there was a presence. There was just something coming from within."

Filmography

1992 Jamón, jamón
1992 Belle Époque
1992 Framed
1993 For Love, Only for Love
1993 The Greek Labyrinth
1993 The Rebel
1994 Alegre ma non troppo
1994 Todo es mentira
1995 Entre rojas
1995 El Efecto mariposa
1996 La Celestina
1996 Brujas

Penelope Cruz

1996 Más que amor, frenesí
1997 Love Can Seriously Damage Your Health
1997 Open Your Eyes
1997 Live Flesh
1997 Et horne af paradis
1998 The Girl of Your Dreams
1998 The Hi-Lo Country
1998 Don Juan
1999 All About My Mother
1999 Twice Upon A Yesterday
2000 All the Pretty Horses
2000 Woman on Top
2001 Blow
2001 Don't Tempt Me
2001 Captain Corelli's Mandolin
2001 Vanilla Sky
2002 Waking Up in Reno
2003 Fanfan la Tulipe
2003 Gothika
2004 Head in the Clouds
2004 Noel
2004 Don't Move
2005 Sahara
2005 Chromophobia
2006 Bandidas
2006 Volver
2007 Manolete (A Matador's Mistress)
2007 The Good Night
2008 Elegy
2008 Vicky Cristina Barcelona
2009 G-Force
2009 Broken Embraces
2009 Nine
2010 Sex and the City 2
2011 Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides
2012 Nero Fiddled
2012 Venuto al mondo[127]