Lavish jewelry, mellow hair cascade and rich eyebrows, it is as if the time has lodged somewhere at Penelope Cruz’s last feature “Broken Embraces”, the current W magazine frontispiece being an ultimate reminiscent of the Almodovar woman. The muse of the director at this time is switching the drama mask to Thalia playing in Woody Allen’s latest comedy To Rome with Love. In the awaiting of her new film she sparkles loftily on the cover of W in Givenchy turtleneck, Lynn Ban 18k gold-plate lapis lazuli necklace playing up in Yves Saint Laurent gloves.
Among the columns Penelope Cruz keeps mesmerizing us in soft black and white shots, immortalized by the two pioneers in the digital manipulation of photography Mert and Marcus. Take the name as sign, the result is an arcane and surreal photo-montage of the diva! What the item has in store for us? Let’s find out citing from Penelope’s main statements. The 38-year old actress reveals the humble beginnings of her career admitting in order to get the part for Jamón she had to lie about her age. At that time her path crossed for the first time with the dare-devil of Spanish cinema Javier Bardem.
Their second collaboration brought home the bacon really, Penelope not only winning an Oscar for best supporting actress, but she also found love in the person of Javier. That’s how she recalls the filming period from “Vicky Cristina Barcelona”: “Woody gave us the script he wrote in English, and he gave us the freedom to translate and improvise. Woody told me recently that he still doesn’t know if we are talking about the atomic bomb. And it’s the same thing in To Rome With Love—he doesn’t speak Italian. I translated my lines. So he still doesn’t know what I am saying.”
Penelope describes with a funny flair her labour relation with Woody Allen recalling their first meeting: “(…)We sat down for 30 seconds. He had seen Volver, and he thought I would be right for this character. And that was it. I never spoke to him again until we were shooting. People ask Woody, – Do you spend a lot of time with your actors? In front of all of us he says, – No—I try to avoid the cast. They come to me with all these strange questions that I either don’t know how to answer or I don’t want to answer. Somehow it works.”
She has drama in her fingertips with such major pictures behind her as “Volver” or “Don’t move” but when it comes to comedy, Penelope encounters bigger challenges: “I don’t play comedy as comedy. That would be the biggest trap. I think about the characters and their situations. Then you don’t have to worry where the laugh is going to be. But comedy is harder than drama.” An essential Penelope interview could not pass away without mentioning her cinematic advocate and friend Pedro Almodovar.
Within the interview she doesn’t forget praising his true friend alluding to the umpteen sex scene shot with Pedro: “It’s hard to invent a new way to shoot a sex scene, but Pedro has done it so many times. During the shooting, Pedro was giving my character thoughts. She’s kind of happy that her husband’s dead, but Pedro kept saying to me: “What are you going to do with the body? Why are you putting on lipstick?” The whole crew was laughing so hard, but a man had just died. That tension between tragedy and hilarity is why Pedro is a genius.”
For a worthy end Penelope confesses how Almodovar awe-inspiring movie Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! had an effect on her and determined her becoming an actress: “…that’s why I wanted to become an actress. It’s heartbreaking; it always makes me cry. After I saw it, I saw how my life would go. That movie gave me the dream.” If you are nosy for the two’s forthcoming scheme or other inside stories about Penelope follow the newsstands for the printed version!
Photo courtesy of W Magazine
