Penelope Cruz, the guest on this week’s episode of The Hollywood Reporter’s Awards Chatter podcast, is a stunningly talented and beautiful, trailblazing Spanish actress who is one of only a small handful of Europeans who have become bona fide A-list stars in America. The Los Angeles Times has called her “one of international cinema’s most artistically risk-ready performers.” The New York Times has submitted that she is “near the top of any credible list of present-day flesh-and-blood screen goddesses.” And Sir Ben Kingsley has said, “No two of her performances are alike; watch any two of her films back to back and the sheer reach of her range is immediately obvious.”
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Over the 30 years since her big screen debut in the Spanish film Jamon, Jamon (opposite Javier Bardem, who is now her husband), she has won acting awards from each of the five highest-profile European film academies — indeed, she has three Goyas from Spain, two Felixes from the European Film Academy, one BAFTA from England, one David di Donatello from Italy and one Cesar from France; she has starred in two films which won the best international feature Oscar, 1992’s Belle Epoque and 1999’s All About My Mother; for 2006’s Volver, she became the first Spanish actress ever to be nominated for an acting Oscar, and two additional acting nominations later — for 2008’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona and 2009’s Nine — remains the only Spanish actress ever nominated; and for Vicky Cristina Barcelona, she became, in 2009, the first Spanish actress ever to win an acting Oscar.
But she is best known for her seven collaborations with the Spanish master Pedro Almodóvar — 1997’s Live Flesh, 1999’s All About My Mother, 2006’s Volver, 2009’s Broken Embraces, 2013’s I’m So Excited!, 2019’s Pain and Glory and, most recently, 2021’s Parallel Mothers, for which she won the Venice Film Festival’s best actress prize, was named the year’s best actress by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association and the National Society of Film Critics and might well be on her way to a best actress Oscar nomination, as well.
During this episode, the 47-year-old reflects on her unlikely journey from Almodóvar superfan to muse, and why they work so well together; how she feels about the opportunities she has had in Hollywood versus those she has had in Europe; why she, like Almodóvar, feel that her character in Parallel Mothers — a fashion photographer who strikes up a friendship with a younger woman who, like she, is about to become a single mother — is the most challenging role she has ever played; and much more.
