Penelope Cruz’ Nine Lives
Can a Broadway Music finally give “The Spanish Enchantress” her first Hollywood hit?
by Alex S. Morrison

There is a longstanding Hollywood superstition suggesting that winning an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress is the career kiss of death. Mira Sorvino has never rivaled her winning role in Mighty Aphrodite, Catherine Zeta-Jones hasn’t had a single hit since Chicago, and Renee Zellweger has watched her movies tank consistently since getting an Oscar for Cold Mountain.

But Penelope Cruz seems to have found the perfect way to reverse the curse: Before the 2009 win for her role as mentally unstable artist Maria Elena in Woody Allen’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona, the actress known as the “Spanish Enchantress” had never had anything resembling a box office blockbuster. Which is a fairly impressive feat when you consider how many high-profile roles she managed to land opposite A-list alpha males like Matt Damon (2000’s All The Pretty Horses), Johnny Depp (2001’s Blow), Nicolas Cage (2001’s Captain Corelli’s Mandolin), Tom Cruise (2001’s Vanilla Sky) and Matthew McConaughey (2005’s Sahara). The fact is, despite stellar starring roles in numerous foreign films, Cruz remains best known in the U.S. for her relationships with her leading men, including Cruise, McConaughey and current boyfriend Javier Bardem (whom she first worked with in 1997’s Live Flesh).

So where other actresses have had to worry about maintaining momentum in the wake of winning Oscar gold, the 35-year-old Cruz approaches the release of the eagerly anticipated Nine simply looking for a Hollywood hit in which she doesn’t appear as the voice of a crime-fighting guinea pig (see: last summer’s kiddie flick G-Force… or, better yet, don’t).

This is not the future most pundits would have predicted for Cruz when she first came to the attention of American art-house audiences in the late ‘90s. Born Penélope Cruz Sanchez in Madrid, she began her career as a ballet dancer with Spain’s National Conservatory before besting 300 other girls in a talent agency audition at the age of 15. Roles in Spanish TV shows and music videos led to film acting, including a role in 1992’s Oscar-winning import Belle Epoque. But it was her work with Spanish indie auteur Pedro Almodóvar that initially established Cruz’s thespian cred in Hollywood.

“I met Pedro when I was 18 and I was too young for the script that he was writing,” she recalls during an interview at the Toronto Film Festival. “But he told me, ‘I will write something else for you,’ and now we’ve made four films together. We became friends from the beginning and know each other really well. We share a lot of our lives with each other, and I count him as one of my closest friends.” That friendship has produced some of the best work of their respective careers, including Live Flesh, 1999’s All About My Mother (which won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film), 2006’s Volver (for which Cruz earned her first Oscar nomination) and their latest collaboration, Broken Embraces.

The latter film, which was nominated for a Golden Palm Award at the Cannes Film Festival and will be released in December, casts Cruz as Lena, an aspiring actress who suddenly finds herself the muse for visionary director Mateo Blanco (Lluís Homar). Though the film noir-style story of passion, jealousy, obsession and guilt is clearly a work of fiction, it’s not difficult to imagine the loving connection between Lena and Mateo mirroring the one between Penelope and her mentor, Pedro.

“It is a very different type of relationship,” Cruz says, noting the romantic and sexual nature of Lena and Mateo’s partnership. “But I used a lot of my relationship with Pedro in playing the role. Emotionally, he is somebody that I connect with, somebody I’m close with, somebody I care about. A lot of times when we were rehearsing Pedro would play Lluís’ role, and when he and I were acting together it helped me understand our relationship. He is very important in my life.”

Cruz readily admits that this close connection between them allows Almodóvar to bring out her peak performances. “I think it’s because he’s very specific and very honest,” she reasons, “and he sees everything. On and off the set you cannot lie to him, and I know he can’t lie to me either. The fact that we’re close friends does not mean that he’s less demanding. I always feel the same feeling of butterflies while working with him. I cannot bear to have him go home disappointed at the end of the day: I always want to feel that I am giving 100% because, one time after another, he’s given me huge amounts of trust.”

But while her friendship with Almodóvar has inarguably produced some of her finest work, Cruz has certainly proven her abilities when working with other directors. After all, Fernando Trueba’s Belle Epoque won a Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, and she was widely praised for her work in director Alejandro Amenábar’s Abre Los Ojos (which was remade by Cameron Crowe as Vanilla Sky). So why can’t Hollywood filmmakers seem to find projects worthy of Cruz’s talents?

She rejects outright the notion that Hollywood studios have failed to provide the same quality opportunities she’s gotten overseas. “I think it would sound ungrateful if I said that the work in America was less interesting than my European work,” she insists. “I feel that as an actress from Spain who spoke very little English, I’ve gotten to work with a lot of amazing people in America. I’ve never felt like I had difficulty because I never expected this to happen, since it never happened to an actress from my country. The doors were much more closed years ago, so I was very grateful that they kept giving me opportunities.”

But Almodóvar sees things differently. “Hollywood doesn’t take risks with actors,” he told London’s Telegraph. “They’re not that rich in female characters either. I have the advantage that I know Penelope very well as a friend. She has such faith in me, so I can take more risks, bring out those unseen Penelopes that other directors wouldn’t dare to conceive. She is the perfect material that I can shape into all the different women I can imagine… and [Lena] is the most difficult role she has played in all her career.”

Indeed, while critical reaction to Broken Embraces at the Toronto Film Festival was mixed, Penelope’s performance was universally praised, with some people predicting yet another Oscar nod in her future. But first, there’s the matter of Nine, Chicago director Rob Marshall’s eagerly anticipated film adaptation of the Tony Award-winning Broadway musical. Based on Federico Fellini’s 1963 film 8½, the story follows a director (played by Daniel Day-Lewis) struggling to find balance during a mid-life crisis, juggling dynamic relationships with the myriad women in his life. With a remarkable cast that also includes Nicole Kidman, Judi Dench, Marion Cotillard and Kate Hudson, the film is the closest thing this year’s awards season has to a sure thing… not to mention Cruz’s best chance yet for a bona-fide Hollywood hit.

“I miss it,” she admits when asked about working with such a stellar lineup of talent. “It was a long shoot with a lot of preparation time, but I loved it because I've always wanted to do a musical. I loved the feeling of going back to dancing five hours a day and the challenge of having to sing and be completely vulnerable. I think we were all caught off guard by it, but we had a very supportive team. We were all together all the time during the training part. Singing, acting, choreography, dancing… we would do classes all day long.”

Adding to the shoot’s allure for Cruz was the opportunity to act alongside one of her idols, Sophia Loren, who worked with the legendary Fellini on Boccaccio ‘70. “8½ is one of my favorite movies of all time, and it felt like Fellini was very present on the set,” she recalls with a warm smile. “Our movie was different because it was a musical, but Sophia knew Fellini and worked with [8½ star] Marcello Mastroianni many times and would share stories about that era and those amazing people with us.”

With Nine hitting theaters this month and Broken Embraces following closely on its tail, all that remains is to wait and watch the box office receipts come in. But Cruz, looking radiant in a violet and white sundress and light pink cardigan, doesn’t seem all that concerned with her commercial success (or lack thereof). For her, it truly seems to be all about the journey as opposed to the destination.

“When I started,” she recalls, “my biggest aspiration was just to be able to be an actress with work. The best situation I could imagine was to be able to choose what I wanted to do. That counts more for me than the concept of stardom. I think we're constantly moving forward, evolving, changing and learning, and I never want to lose that sense of excitement every time I go to the set.”