- CBS 60 Minutes Interview
- Web Extra: At The Ballet
- Web Extra: Working With Woody
- Web Extra: Penelope and Pedro
- Web Extra: The Language Barrier

At 35, Spanish actress Penelope Cruz is one of the most sensual and photographed women in the world. She has won critical acclaim, not only in Europe, but now, also in Hollywood. Last year she took home the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress — the first Spanish actress ever to win an Academy Award.

How did this versatile performer from a working class suburb of Madrid become this generation’s Sophia Loren?

In part, it could be by turning in performances like the one she gives playing Carla, the seductive mistress, in the movie Nine – her first time singing and dancing in a film.

In an interview with Charlie Rose, Cruz said she trained for three months to do a number in the movie.

She told Rose, “I had so much fun.”

And Cruz’s enjoyment shows in her provocative performance.

Cruz loves what she does. She’s a risk taker. She’s also a tireless worker who’s known for throwing herself into roles, pushing herself to the limit. And that’s just what she does in “Nine” to make her character Carla a version of everyman’s fantasy woman.

Cruz said playing Carla “really was a dream that came true.”

In Nine, Daniel Day Lewis plays the character Guido, just another in a string of men who fall hopelessly in love with the obsessed, sensual, unstable women Cruz loves to play.

“I saw something in Carla that’s a little bit off,” Cruz said. “I think she’s a very insecure woman, and she’s a little bit stuck on using her sexuality, because she’s so obsessed with Guido that that’s like one of her weapons.”

However, perhaps the most extreme example of this kind of character is her portrayal of the suicidal painter Maria Elena in Woody Allen’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona.

“I had so much fun playing that woman,” Cruz said.

Cruz explained, “She thought she was too special to be happy — that she was a genius.”

She added, “(Maria Elena) would not allow herself to become more stable and more sane, because she thinks that if she does that, she’s afraid that she will become somebody boring and mediocre.”

In real life, Cruz herself can be tortured, obsessive and driven, which was tough for director Woody Allen, who’s known for shooting a scene in one or two takes.

Rose told Cruz, “You are a perfectionist. You want to try it again and again and again to get it right.”

Cruz replied, “Yeah, I think I — I drove him a little bit crazy, asking for more takes because I need somebody to stop me. I will never find the moment to stop, say, ‘OK, it’s enough. We have it.’”

That’s the performance that earned her an Oscar.

“I still can’t believe that I won the Oscar last year,” she said. “Because the way I grew up, and just to dream about becoming an actress and making a living out of that sounded like science fiction in my environment. You know, I come from a family where we had just what we needed to survive. So to dream about this type of job was crazy.”

Rose asked Cruz, “What qualities in you do you think most served getting where you are now?”

“Maybe something that has been my best friend and my worst enemy at times, which is how stubborn I can be,” Cruz replied. “And then, when people that really know me tell me that I’m stubborn, I always fight them and say, ‘That’s not true. That’s a myth.’ But I really am.”

Cruz grew up in Alcobendas, a working class suburb of Madrid. Today she lives outside of Madrid, but she agreed to meet Rose in her old neighborhood.

Cruz is the oldest of three children. Her father was a salesman, her mother, a hairdresser. The house she grew up in is gone, but she showed 60 Minutes her grandmother’s apartment, where she spent a lot of time.

Cruz says she had a happy childhood. It was a simple life.

When Cruz took Rose to one of her favorite restaurants, Casa Benigna, she talked about her mother and what she learned from watching her.

Rose said, “That was your first acting lesson — watching your mother in her own beauty salon, observing, seeing people talk about their lives.”

“Yeah,” Cruz said. “It was more interesting for me to pay attention to what they were not saying, you know, to what they wanted to hide from the other clients, or from my mother. And they were acting, most of them. And that’s why I always say that beauty salon — that hair salon — was like a first acting school.”

But as a kid, Cruz had no ambition to be an actress. She wanted to be a dancer, and studied classical ballet for over 10 years. She still has a passion for it, as Rose discovered when he and the star visited a New York City Ballet rehearsal.

When watching two performers dance, Rose asked Cruz, “Want to try?”

“No, I wish I could do that. Oh my God. That’s –,” she trailed off.

Rose said, “There’s probably no performing art that requires more physical discipline.”

Cruz agreed, adding, “Nothing harder than that I think.”

Cruz told Rose dance helped her with acting “a lot.”

“If I hadn’t had the discipline of all those years in the dance world, it would have been much, much tougher,” she explained. “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.”

Cruz loved dance until she was 14 years old. Then she saw a movie called Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down by up-and-coming Spanish director Pedro Almodovar.

“I’ve never felt so inspired and (I knew) this is what I want to do,” she said. “And that week, I looked for an agent. And I did an audition, and she sent me home and she said, ‘You are too young. Come back next year.’ But I came back the week after. And she sent me away again. And then I came back the week after.”

“What does this story tell you about you?” Rose asked.

Cruz responded, “Stubborn.”

At 16, Cruz landed her first movie role in a Spanish film called Jamon, Jamon, playing a voluptuous teenage seductress opposite Javier Bardem. She became an overnight sensation as much for her nude scenes as for her talent, which made her very uncomfortable.

Rose asked the actress, “Were you concerned about how you’ll be perceived?”

Cruz replied, “I just knew I had to do the complete opposite.”

Her next movie, Belle Epoque, won a Foreign Language Oscar.

“In Belle Époque,” Cruz said, “I was playing a girl that was younger than myself — much younger, and innocent — much more innocent than I was then.”

Cruz’s ability to play both innocence and sensuality caught Hollywood’s attention. In the ’90s, she moved to Los Angeles where she was cast over the next seven years in a string of big budget, but lackluster American films with top directors and big name actors, including All the Pretty Horses with Matt Damon, Captain Correlli’s Mandolin with Nicholas Cage and Vanilla Sky with Tom Cruise.

Cruise and Cruz had a well-publicized three-year relationship.

“Tell me about him,” Rose said. “What he meant to you at that time?”

“I don’t feel comfortable talking about that,” Cruz replied. “All I could tell you is that he’s a very, very good person whose only intention, I think, is really to help others and, and I think he’s been treated in a way that, you know, sometimes has been a little bit unfair.”

“In what way?” Rose asked.

Cruz replied, “I really don’t want to get into it with more detail.”

However, Cruz has no problem talking about her great friendship and professional relationship with director Pedro Almodovar. They have known each other for almost 20 years, and have made four critically-acclaimed movies together, including the recently released Broken Embraces.

Vanity Fair celebrated their collaboration by asking them to pose for the magazine’s upcoming Hollywood issue.

Almodovar says Cruz is his muse. She’s says he’s her mentor.

“It is true that we love each other,” Almodovar told Rose.

“And how did that happen?” Rose asked.

Cruz said, “It started many years ago, when I was a kid. And we’ve gone through so much together.”

Both Cruz and Almodovar agree the director relaunched Cruz’s career, which had stalled out in Hollywood when he gave her the lead in the Spanish film Volver in 2006.

Cruz said the film opened up a lot of new doors for her career.

Rose added, “It also showed you what you could do.”

Cruz said, “It’s emotionally, and and in every way, more demanding than most of the characters that I played before that point.

Though the movie was in Spanish, her earthy, expressive performance proved to American critics that Cruz had the range and the talent — no matter what the language — to win an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress.

The nomination, Rose pointed out, was a vindication for Cruz who has struggled for years to be more than just the beautiful girl. However, her sensuality is an essential part of her appeal.

Rose said, “It’s always there. Other actresses have had (it). Sophia Loren had it. Tell me about you and this sexuality. It’s in your DNA?”

“I never felt, ‘Oh, I think I look good,’” she said. “I always tend to be more in the insecure side. And I thought that has always been a way to protect myself. Because I don’t trust the good feelings that can come from that.”

Rose said, “The good feelings that come from knowing you’re beautiful and sexy and-”

Cruz said, “I never -”

“You don’t trust it?” Rose asked.

“No.”

Rose pressed, “You know it’s there. You know it. You feel it. You know how men react to you. But – ”

“No, that — I didn’t say that I know it’s there,” she said.

“You do know it’s there,” Rose said.

Cruz said, “No, I think -”

“Yes, you do,” Rose stressed. “You know it’s there.”

“At moments it can be there,” she said. “What I can give that to a character if it’s needed, then I can be more free to explore that in me and put it there. But what I think I have is a physique that can change a lot.”

Rose remarked, “You know that you cannot depend on that for a lifetime.”

“No. Nobody. Nobody,” she said. “So I never allowed myself to really enjoy that, which is maybe a bad thing. I don’t know.”

After making more than 40 movies, Cruz has decided to take more time for herself. She’s been in a relationship with Javier Bardem for two years. He co-starred with her in her first film, and then in “Vicky Cristina Barcelona.” While she won’t talk about that relationship, she will say that she wants more from her life than making movies.

Rose pointed out that Cruz wants to make fewer movies now.

“There was a point where I was making four movies a year,” she said. “I was always on a set. I had no stories to tell. I was feeling empty. My life was just luggage and hotels and from set to set, from character to character. And one day, I said, ‘And where is mine?’ You know? And the moment I started to feel that fear, I stopped and I slowed down.”

She said she likes the rhythm she’s in now.

“I enjoy it more,” she said. “But I feel very, very lucky that I can keep working.”

Source: CBS News

After winning an Oscar, Cruz has now won the Best actress award at ALMA for her performance as Maria Elena in’ Vicky Cristina Barcelona, reported Aceshowbiz.’Frida’ star Hayek was given the Anthony Quinn Award for Industry Excellence at the gala ceremony held at the Royce Hall Auditorium at UCLA on Thursday night. It was co-hosted by actress Eva Longoria alongside comedian George Lopez.

“Oh… It’s not gonna be 45 seconds I can say that right now. Has anybody ever fainted here? Cause I might be the first one. Thank you so much to the Academy. I want to share this with my fellow nominees and with the amazing ensemble of actors I had the privilege to work with in this movie. Thank you Woody for trusting me with this beautiful character. Thank you for writen all these years some of the greatest characters for women. And I can not talk about great female characters without thanking my friend, Pedro Almodóvar for having made me part of so many of his adventures. Thank you. Thank you Bigas Luna, Fernando Trueba, for giving me my first two movies. Thank you Harvey Weinstein. I want to dedicate this to my parents, and my brother and sister and to my friend Robert Garlock who is not with us anymore. And to everyone who has helped me from the beginning and you all know who you are. I thank you from my heart. I grew up in a place called Alcobendas where this was not a very realistic dream and always the night of the Academy Awards I stayed up the night to watch the show and I always felt that this ceremony was a moment of unity for the world because art in any form is and has been and will always be our universal language and we need to do everything we can to protect it’s survival so I thank you so much. And I have to say something in Spanish: Todos los fieles de Espania ahora estan compartiendo este momento conmigo y sientan que esto tambien es de ellos, se los dedico. A todos los actores de mi pais, muchisimas gracias. (Translation) All of the loyal people of Spain, now they share this moment with me and feel than this (Oscar) is theirs also, so I dedicate to them. To all of the actors and actresses of my country, Thanks a lot. Thank you so much!” – Penélope Cruz

Huge congratulations to Penélope Cruz on this much deserved honor!

You can view her beautiful and heartfelt speech after the cut, here. Captures and tons of photos to come tomorrow!

In a quick interview, Penélope told The LA Times, “I’m always surprised when I hear my name, of course,” she said backstage. “It’s a better feeling if you’re surprised. I get very terrified about going up there, but at the same time you want to go, so my heart was going very fast.”

She was wearing a flattering brown Azzedine Alaia fit and flared dress with black lace trim, brown tights and platform ankle-strap pumps. She’d also worn a black Alaia to the recent Screen Actors Guild Awards.

And for the Oscars? Another Alaia, perhaps?

“Tomorrow, I cannot tell you,” she explained. “I cannot answer that. That is a secret –- to tell what you are wearing.”

OK. Fine. So where will you put your award?

“In my house, I think.” (laughs)

If she does win on Sunday, Cruz should be thrilled to receive the statuette from Javier Bardem, her compatriot and partner in Allen’s romantic comedy, who gets the honor for winning best supporting actor last year for No Country for Old Men.

Cruz, the only Spanish actress ever nominated for an Oscar, has now done it twice. In 2007, she got a best actress nod for her work in Pedro Almodóvar’s Volver.

She is also one of few Hispanics among this year’s Oscar nominees, quite the change since two years ago when she was one of more than a dozen Spaniards and Latin Americans nominated.

Chilean-born U.S.-raised Claudio Miranda is nominated for cinematography for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Guillermo del Toro’s Hellboy II: The Golden Army got a nod for achievement in makeup but he’s not up for the award.

Though Cruz is the favorite for the Oscar, rivals Viola Davis (Doubt) and Marisa Tomei (The Wrestler) are also seen as possible winners. The other two nominees are Amy Adams (Doubt) and Taraji P. Henson (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button).

Cruz, who has gotten rave reviews for her character as the sexy and wild ex wife in Vicky Cristina Barcelona, has already won best supporting actress from the New York Film Critics Circle, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association and the Hollywood Foreign Press Association.

Filmed in the Catalan city that gives the movie its name and starring also Scarlett Johansson and Rebecca Hall, Vicky Cristina Barcelona follows two friends on vacation in Spain that fall in love for a painter without considering that his ex wife, with whom he had a stormy relationship, will reappear in his life.

Bardem was not nominated but success continues to follow these two great actors who, according to reports, are also romantically involved, though neither of them has confirmed it.

They hadn’t worked together since Bigas Luna’s Jamón, Jamón, (A Tale of Ham and Passion) a 1992 drama full of eroticism and violence filmed when Bardem and Cruz were two unknown young actors.

Since then, their careers took different routes until they crossed paths again in Allen’s film.

Cruz went on to appear in Almodóvar’s Carne Trémula (Live Flesh), Todo Sobre Mi Madre (All About My Mother), and the upcoming Los Abrazos Rotos (Broken Embraces.)

Her jump to Hollywood hasn’t been that glorious appearing in an array of B List films with titles such Blow, All the Pretty Horses and Vanilla Sky. But her luck changed with Volver, which reunited her with Spanish cinema.

Bardem last year scored the first Oscar for a Spanish actor for his role as an unscrupulous psychopath in the Cohen brothers’ No Country for Old Men.

He’s known for playing characters in extreme situations that include a quadriplegic fighting for his right to die (Mar Adentro/The Sea Inside) and a sensual bullfighter that fights naked under the moon’s gaze (Jamón Jamón.)

In 2001, he was nominated for a best actor Oscar for his starring role as Cuban writer Reinaldo Arenas in Julian Schnabel’s Before Night Falls.

Source: NY Daily News

Penélope Cruz is nominated for Best Supporting Female.

Penelope Cruz, Vicky Cristina Barcelona
Rosemarie DeWitt, Rachel Getting Married
Rosie Perez, The Take
Misty Upham, Frozen River
Debra Winger, Rachel Getting Married

Javier Bardem is also up for Best Male Lead and Woody Allen is up for Best Screenplay.

That’s what the Oscars nominee told Gold Derby tonight when I called her in Madrid to ask her what she’d do next Sunday when this derby race is done, the victor is known and, win or lose, she can finally catch her breath.

Penelope Cruz has four extra tickets to the ceremony, so she’ll be at the Academy Awards with her brother, sister, mom (dad got to go to Golden Globes and BAFTA) “and one of my best friends from Spain from when I was a little girl,” she said. “I want my family to have a good night. To win, it would be an amazing thing! But I want to enjoy the night and the people around me.”

But tonight she coped with the pre-Oscars jitters by drinking herbal tea as we gabbed on the phone. She leaves Madrid in the morning to head to L.A. and begin her exciting week.

Penelope Cruz shared such thoughts with us plus the details of her schedule for the week ahead in L.A. She’s got lots of fittings scheduled to pick out the right dress for her march up the Oscars’ red carpet plus such work-related gigs as a photo shoot for her upcoming movie, Nine, directed by Rob Marshall (Chicago), based on the Tony Award-winning musical.

“For me this has already been bigger than anything I could ever dream of,” she told us. “I started working in Spain when I was 16. To be in this situation twice, with the other nomination for Volver, I am the first person to be surprised and overwhelmed . . . . Whatever happens, it’s been a great adventure from the making of Vicky Cristina Barcelona to the great surprises that came with it and after.”

Oh, yeah, and by the way, Penelope Cruz proves she has great cyber-taste. “I am a big fan of your website,” she says. “I do look at the The Envelope, but I try not to read about myself… ”

Source: LA Times

I’ve now added HQ pictures and screencaps of Pe and her win, enjoy!

When Tariq Khan makes a bold Oscar prediction, take heed. He’s one of the savviest Oscarologists I know and this year he’s going where no other guru dares: out onto a thin, shaky limb for Amy Adams (Doubt) for supporting actress. Interesting call! That category, after all, is where most Oscar upsets happen.

Tariq has one of the best Oscar prediction rates every year. Check out the forecasts he made last year for Fox News — he scored 100%. Earlier this derby season he was one of the first pundits warning us that Kate Winslet might be nommed for The Reader instead of Revolutionary Road.

Below, Tariq makes his argument for Amy Adams, building his Oscar case carefully by citing past award trends and issues at play this year. I dare to disagree with him, though. I think the two points he’s not giving enough due are the Babe Factor and the fact that, while, yes, Amy Adams has the most screen time, she doesn’t have the big impact scene emotionally that, say, her costar Viola Davis has or even front-runner Penelope Cruz. The Babe Factor boosts Cruz hugely, I think, and it’s a trump card that shouldn’t be downplayed. Over the last two decades the largely male academy has turned the lead and supporting actress winners’ circles into a beauty pageant.

But Tariq has proved me wrong often in the past. Just for Gold Derby readers, he’s written out his case below.

I know that most pundits seem to think that Penelope Cruz in Vicky Cristina Barcelona is ahead in the supporting actress race. However, I am going to make a bold prediction: Penelope Cruz will lose to Amy Adams in Doubt.

I’ll admit that I’m not certain about this, the way I felt certain last year that Julie Christie in Away From Her would lose to Marion Cotillard in La Vie en Rose. Still, there are some key historical voting patterns that suggest an upset victory by Adams over Cruz may be likely. Allow me to explain.

An Oscars upset usually happens when two factors are in place: support for the presumed front-runner is softer than people realize and support for another nominee is stronger than people realize.

First, let’s take a look at reasons why support for Cruz may be weaker than we think it is.

1.) She lost both the Golden Globe and SAG Awards. True, she lost to Kate Winslet in The Reader, who isn’t competing in this category at the Oscars. But how can one really be a front-runner without winning at least one of the two awards? In the previous 14 years (since the inception of the SAG awards), only nine out 56 nominees have won an acting Oscar without a Globe or SAG win. They are Kevin Spacey in The Usual Suspects, Juliette Binoche in The English Patient, James Coburn in Affliction, Russell Crowe in Gladiator, Marcia Gay Harden in Pollock, Denzel Washington in Training Day, Adrien Brody in The Pianist, Alan Arkin in Little Miss Sunshine and Tilda Swinton in Michael Clayton. That’s a 16% Oscar success race for those with neither a Globe nor SAG victory. It’s true that the other four supporting actress nominees this year face the same odds -– but they’re the same odds faced by Cruz.

2.) Her film, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, is up for no other awards. Remember the one-nomination wonder factor I used when dismissing the chances of Cate Blanchett in I’m Not There and Amy Ryan in Gone Baby Gone last year? Well, I’m using it again here. Over the past 15 years, only four actors have won Oscars for films not nominated for any other awards. They are Jessica Lange in Blue Sky, Angelina Jolie in Girl, Interrupted, Charlize Theron in Monster, and Forest Whitaker in The Last King of Scotland. That’s four out of 60 nominees, just under 7%. And Jolie, Theron and Whitaker were all both Globe and SAG champs, while Globe winner Lange only lost the SAG race to Jodie Foster in Nell because no one had seen her long-shelved Blue Sky. (The film played in just a handful of theaters for about a week.)

3.) She has limited screen time in Vicky Cristina Barcelona. The past 15 years, 10 of the supporting actress victors won for roles that could be considered leading or semi-leading (they were part of the central action of their films, though not necessarily the focal points.) I’m talking about Anna Paquin in The Piano, Mira Sorvino in Mighty Aphrodite, Juliette Binoche in The English Patient, Angelina Jolie in Girl, Interrupted, Marcia Gay Harden in Pollock, Jennifer Connelly in A Beautiful Mind, Catherine Zeta-Jones in Chicago, Renee Zellweger in Cold Mountain, Rachel Weisz in The Constant Gardener, and Jennifer Hudson in Dreamgirls. The other five that won for true supporting performances were Dianne Wiest in Bullets Over Broadway, Kim Basinger in L.A. Confidential, Judi Dench in Shakespeare in Love, Cate Blanchett in The Aviator and Tilda Swinton in Michael Clayton. All but Wiest were in best-picture nominees (and at least her film was nominated for six other awards.) Based on this theory, an actress has just under a 7% chance of winning a supporting Oscar if she has a smaller-sized role in a non-best picture nominee. Cruz clearly falls into this category. (She doesn’t even appear until halfway into the movie.)

4.) It’s a contemporary comedy. It’s not impossible to win for a funny performance, but it’s harder –- especially in a contemporary comedy. The ones which have done the trick in recent years (Alan Arkin in Little Miss Sunshine, Jack Nicholson and Helen Hunt in As Good As It Gets) have benefited tremendously by being featured in best picture nominees. Never mind the fact that Cruz’s one-note performance may strike many as less than Oscar-worthy, regardless of how memorable it is.

5.) Voters may not want to give Harvey Weinstein the satisfaction of two acting wins. With a Kate Winslet win for the Weinstein Company’s The Reader looking more and more likely, will voters want to give a second acting award to the same studio? Especially if the man behind that studio is Harvey Weinstein?

Now, let’s look at reasons why support for another nominee may be stronger than we think it is. When Academy members are considering the five names in the supporting actress category, there’s good reason to believe that they may be drawn to Amy Adams.

1.) She has the largest role in this category. As I explained above, size does matter. Adams is the only one in this category with a semi-leading role. She has plenty of dialogue and good dramatic scene work, managing to more than hold her own while acting opposite Meryl Streep for much of the film. Don’t think that voters won’t take that into account. And while the much talked about brief performance by Viola Davis might have a greater impact, many will feel that it’s just too brief to deserve an Oscar. Even veteran Ruby Dee lost for her small role in American Gangster last year, despite winning the SAG award just a few weeks earlier. If Dee couldn’t win, there’s probably no way that Davis can.

2.) Doubt is nominated for four acting Oscars. Over the past 15 years, 16 films have earned three or more acting nominations: Michael Clayton, Brokeback Mountain, Million Dollar Baby, The Aviator, Mystic River, Chicago, The Hours, Adaptation, In the Bedroom, Iris, Shakespeare in Love, As Good As It Gets, The English Patient, Pulp Fiction, Bullets Over Broadway and In the Name of the Father. All but four of them (Brokeback Mountain, In the Bedroom, Pulp Fiction and In the Name of the Father) won at least one acting Oscar. That breaks down to 75% of films with three three or more acting nominations winning at least one of them. Of those same 16 films, the only one to scored four acting nods was 2002′s Chicago, in exactly the same categories as Doubt — best actress, supporting actor and two for supporting actress (which produced a win for Catherine Zeta-Jones). In fact, over the past 40 years, only 11 films have received four or more acting nominations (Chicago, Terms of Endearment, Reds, Kramer vs. Kramer, Coming Home, Julia, The Turning Point, Network, The Godfather Part II, The Godfather and The Last Picture Show). Except for The Turning Point, they all won at least one acting trophy. That breaks down to an astonishing 91% of all films with four or more acting nods winning at least one of them. That bodes extremely well for Doubt. With Meryl Streep expected to lose to Kate Winslet and Philip Seymour Hoffman getting clobbered by Heath Ledger, the supporting actress race is all that’s left. Adams has far more screen time (not to mention name recognition) than her co-star Viola Davis. A win by Adams over Davis would be similar to the win by Catherine Zeta-Jones over Queen Latifah for Chicago.

3.) She’s the rare actress who can do art house and pack the house. She was a virtual unknown when nominated in this category for 2005′s Junebug. She then proved her box office draw with the 2007 smash Enchanted. This summer’s Night at the Museum sequel, in which she plays Amelia Earhart, has the smell of another blockbuster. She’ll then appear opposite Meryl Streep again in Julie and Julia. Talent, beauty and box office –- how can Oscar voters not find themselves tempted?

4.) She de-glams for the role. True, it’s not as dramatic as Charlize Theron in Monster or Nicole Kidman in The Hours. But going from Princess Giselle to Sister James follows the example of many a beautiful actress who hid her looks for a juicy role, and later earned awards recognition.

5.) She’s the girl next door. Tom O’Neil has often talked about the Oscar “huggability” factor –- how Academy members vote for the person they most want to hug. How could that not be in Adams in this category? She’s incredibly likable, attractive to men without being threatening to women

Again, I don’t think that Adams is a slam dunk by any means. Cruz could still prevail, as could Viola Davis or Marisa Tomei. But if Adams does become the latest in a long-history of supporting actress surprises this month, you won’t have to ask why.

The Spanish star – who has won a Bafta and been nominated for an Oscar for playing suicidal artist Maria Elena in Woody Allen’s comedy – previously told how at the movie’s first screening at Cannes Film Festival last year, she didn’t understand why people were laughing.

Penelope said: “I knew the general theme of the movie was a comedy so of course I wanted those scenes to be funny, but I completely forgot all of that in those four weeks when I was playing Maria Elena.

“I didn’t want to make a caricature out of her; I didn’t want to laugh at her pain.”

The 34-year-old is very sensitive to her character’s problems.

“Since I was a little girl the subject of mental instability and what it is to be sane and what is to be crazy has always taken my attention. It’s one of the most cruel mysteries of life,” she said.

“It’s so, so easy to label somebody with that, and she is one of the characters. I felt more love for because of what she goes through, and I didn’t want to label her crazy. I wanted to really understand why she has fabricated a reality that is so different from the rest of the world. For Maria Elena the rest of the world is crazy.”

Source: Press Association

PENÉLOPE CRUZ and WOODY ALLEN, The Odd Couple
One film together: Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008).
The archetypal Woody woman might be the over-educated, over-therapized yammerer—exemplified by Diane Keaton’s characters in Annie Hall and Manhattan—but another type of woman has also recurred in his work: the smoldering, emotionally volatile knockout. Think of Charlotte Rampling in Stardust Memories, Scarlett Johansson in Match Point, or, from Allen’s masterful short story “Retribution,” the Wasp goddess Connie Chasen, possessed of a “lewd, humid eroticism” and a body “the envy of a Vogue model.” In Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Cruz takes on this assignment and then some—throwing in bits of Béatrice Dalle in Betty Blue and Emmanuelle Seigner in Bitter Moon for good measure. As María Elena, the tousled, pouty, impossibly sexy ex-wife of Javier Bardem’s painter character, Cruz is a whirlwind of carnality and psychosis. “You are de meesing ingredient,” she tells her ex’s new lover, an American naïf played by Johansson. “I get thees warm feeling when I hear you both locked in passion every night.” With Allen pulling the strings, you just know it’s not going to end well. Photographed at the Carlyle hotel, in New York City.

“I’ve always been a fan of Woody Allen, and that my peers honor me for a Spanish film made by him makes me very happy,” she said. “Thanks, Woody, for believing in me.”

Miss Cruz was ravishing in a floor length lace gown. Her sister Monica was also at the event.

The actress claimed that she made Allen so mad that he had to run away on the final day, Metro reports.

“The last day I went psychotic and asked for ten more takes,” she said.

“When they were about to wrap the movie I always go into a crisis and I think this is it, I have no more chance to do anything else for the character.”

She said that Allen was “very patient” and gave her nine more takes before he fled the scene on the last day of shooting.

Last year, Scarlett Johansson expressed surprise at the reaction of “conservative” people to news of her on-screen kiss with Cruz in the movie.

Source: Digital Spy

Acording to agency AFP, Cruise stated he’s excited for the spanish actress’ second nomination to the prestigious award.

“It’s fantastic. I am very excited by her second nomination. I hope she wins.”

Penélope’s family was present at the Valkyrie premiere this Tuesday in Madrid.

Cruz-Cruise met in 2001 on the set of movie Vanilla Sky. They started dating after the shooting wraped, but called it quits in 2004, according to Lee Anne DeVette, Tom’s sister and agent at the time.

Cruz recently admitted that she tried not to get her hopes up about receiving an Academy Award nomination after being up for one in 2007.

‘I was with my friend Salma and she woke me up two minutes before the announcement, which we watched live. I then received a lot of congratulation calls…

‘(Salma) told me that it was clear for her, that it was going to happen,’ she told the Press Association earlier this month.

‘But all the time I have tried to not expect anything, to be caught by the surprise.’

In the Best Supporting Actress category Cruz will compete against Doubt stars Amy Adams and Viola Davis, Taraji P Henson (The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button) and The Wrestler’s Marisa Tomei.

The 81st annual Academy Awards will be held on February 22 at Hollywood’s Kodak Theater.

The Santa Barbara International Film Festival’s Outstanding Performer of the Year Award for 2009 goes to Penélope Cruz, in all the grace of her countenance’s exquisite thematic harmony. A classic beauty whose dark good looks and luminous brown eyes recall the Golden Age of Hollywood, the Spanish-born actress is in her mid thirties now, and both her career and her appeal have matured. The sensual excitement of her early years is still very much in evidence, but Cruz’s recent work is that of someone who knows not only that she is beautiful, but also what that can mean in a world where beauty is not the only important thing.

In the last three years, Cruz has gone from being a thinking man’s pin-up to something much less common: a world-class movie star. Her two films from 2008, Vicky Cristina Barcelona and Elegy, have together brought her new accolades such as this one, along with a nomination for best supporting actress at the Golden Globes, and a shot at another nomination for the Academy Award, for which she was already nominated once, in the category of Best Actress for her 2007 role as Raimunda in Pedro Almodóvar’s Volver.

Cruz is a hard worker, known to directors and fellow actors alike for her intensity and perfectionism. Adaptable to a wide range of styles, she acts with equal effectiveness in Spanish and in English, and handles fast-paced shooting schedules and demanding leading roles with extraordinary artistic control and vision. Contemporary film acting is hardly a homogenous experience for someone operating on her level and traveling in these professional circles. Directors frequently take radically different approaches to the filmmaking process, and, as a result, comparable assignments don’t necessarily resemble one another.

For instance, compare Volver and Woody Allen’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona. Almodóvar rehearses for weeks or even months before shooting, whereas Allen often doesn’t rehearse his actors at all. Cruz is in nearly every scene of Volver, which runs just longer than two hours, and was required by Almodóvar to submit to an exacting set of rehearsals. On Vicky Cristina Barcelona, in which she plays Maria Elena—a gorgeous, romantic, and emotionally unstable Spanish artist—Cruz auditioned for the film by speaking with Allen for what she claims was “no more than 40 seconds.” She then waited a few weeks before receiving a script, which she studied on her own for several months before arriving on the set in Spain.

The intelligence and honor with which she invests Maria Elena is due to the power of the interpretation of the character that Cruz brought to the film. As the ex-wife of Javier Bardem’s character, the painter Juan Antonio, Cruz’s Maria Elena enters the story at the halfway point and still manages to steal every scene she’s in from the two formidable younger actresses who have been playing the leads from the start—Scarlett Johansson as Cristina and Rebecca Hall as Vicky. Johansson does a great job, but even Cruz’s silent reaction shots are more likely to elicit laughter than Johansson’s lines of dialogue.

At the film’s heart are two dazzling performances by Cruz and Bardem that put the English language to a fearsome test of mettle against its seemingly more expressive rival, Spanish. In the scenes at Juan Antonio’s studio when Maria Elena first arrives, she keeps speaking Spanish in front of Cristina, even though Juan Antonio expressly forbids her to speak anything but English out of politeness to his lover. The result is an intricate and amazing dance of words, with both Spanish characters crossing in and out of their native tongue in such elegant and unpredictable ways that the viewer is drawn ever deeper into their emotional world.

In Elegy, Cruz plays Consuela Castillo, a young Cuban woman who has an affair with her professor at Columbia, played by Ben Kingsley. Critics have been less unanimous in their praise for Elegy, but the growing consensus is that Cruz shows up Kingsley. Although the timely release of several trailers that indicated how willing Cruz remains to get naked in front of the camera may have had something to do with its gaining distribution in this country, in the end what people are buzzing about in relation to this picture is not Cruz’s nudity but her naturalism.

In fact, the fascinating thing about her recent roles is how lit up they are from within by Penélope Cruz’s singular talent. Perhaps it was something that happened when she absorbed the joyfully absurd aesthetic of her mentor Almodóvar, or maybe it is something that would have arrived on its own, but Cruz has begun to play these rather traditional roles in a way that is very special and that feels new. Constantly playing against any tendency to caricature her subjects, she describes her method as “defending what the character values and preserving her reality.” In the process of taking these women’s dilemmas to heart, Cruz melds drama and comedy into a complex and indivisible unity.

Her recent performances are exemplary of a development in genre that will only become more prevalent as film grows into the 21st century—movies acted as drama, but that play as subtle comedy. For directors like Almodóvar and Allen, this confluence of genre reflects a profound appreciation for the ways that human beings fail to achieve clarity about the most central issues in their lives.

A concern for the suffering of people who are confused by life and sex and love is something that Cruz shares with her directors, and her feeling for it informs her acting in both of the pictures being honored here in Santa Barbara. But what constitutes suffering in the life of one of the world’s most glamorous and successful women? One word—the Oscars. Being nominated two years ago was both the high point of Cruz’s career thus far and her most exhaustingly emotional ordeal as a celebrity. What with all the tension, and the chance that her nomination would remain just that—a nomination and not a statuette—there was only one thing for the nervous actress to do. On the way to the Academy Awards, already in her gown and jewels, Penélope Cruz stopped at In-n-Out and ordered a double-double. It’s that kind of carefree attitude that we can’t wait to share when she arrives in Santa Barbara for her tribute at the Arlington.

Penélope Cruz was be honored at SBIFF 2009 with the Outstanding Performer of the Year Award on Saturday, January 24, at the Arlington Theatre.

Source: SBIFF

Penelope, who was staying at the close friend Salma’s Los Angeles home for a sleepover, had planned to sleep through the nominations, having only flown into the city a few hours before. Her hostess, however, had other plans.

Penelope said: “I had just arrived to Los Angeles very, very late at night, and I had went to sleep. Four hours later, I was at the house of some of my girlfriends, and they woke me up. Actually, it was Salma Hayek. She woke me up and said, ‘We have to watch it live!’ I said, ‘That’s such a big risk!’”

Despite fears of jinxing her chances of a nomination, the actress soon discovered her role in romantic comedy Vicky Cristina Barcelona has put her in the running for the Best Supporting Actress award.

She said: “We watched and then I heard the news – everything goes so fast! An hour later, you have to start doing all these interviews and then you spend all day working. I haven’t had the time yet to digest or understand it.”

I spoke to Cruz over the weekend. She was calling from somewhere in the hills of Los Angeles, on a cell-phone. At first, the signal died, and I thought, oh well, modern technology! But Penelope didn’t give up. She got to a landline. Cruz has the sort of vital personality that leaps right off the screen, and right through phone wires too. She pulls you in. (When I met her in the flesh a few years back, I was blown away by her good looks, her lively intelligence and her energy.) It’s hard to believe this vibrant star was thought to be something of a “flop” in American films, with the early disappointments of All The Pretty Horses and Vanilla Sky. Also hard to believe she was ever involved with Tom Cruise. That friendship, which blossomed in the wake of his divorce from Nicole Kidman, was tabloid fodder only nine years ago, but it seems like 20, somehow. She says she is thrilled to have been nominated again. (Her first bid for Oscar was 2006′s Volver, directed by her old friend and mentor, Pedro Almodovar.) “Although, I have to call my family everyday, in Spain, to calm them down, so they don’t get too hopeful.” When I remark that “Vicky Cristina Barcelona” wasn’t a “typical” Woody Allen movie, and that he seems quite the revitalized auteur over the past couple of years, Penelope protests. “Really? I think he’s always re-inventing himself, over and over. He can do anything. Compare, ‘Scoop’ to ‘Purple Rose of Cairo’ or to ‘Hannah and Her Sisters’ or ‘Bullets Over Broadway’”… Penelope gives such a compelling dissertation on the work of Woody Allen, I finally concede, lamely, “Well, I guess it’s that he’s changed locale. Most of his movies used to be set in New York. Now he’s gone European.” Penelope allows that yes, I’m right on that one.

The actress speaks English perfectly, though with a strong, charming, accent. She recalls with horror her first adventures in American moviemaking (she was already a great star in Spain.) “I’d studied French for years. But I had no English, nothing, zero. It was terrible not to be able to really understand your director or your co-stars. I took a crash course, and luckily I picked it up quickly.” Cruz took ballet for nine years at Spain’s National Academy. With that training, has she ever played a dancer? “No, I haven’t. But I did get to dance and sing and a lot else in ‘Nine.’ I do the number ‘A Phone Call to the Vatican’ which has me performing with ropes. I hadn’t danced at all in 14 years. I practiced that number every day, five hours a day from August to November. When we finally shot it, I was so sad when it was all over. It had become part of my life. Now I’m thinking of hanging some ropes around my house, just to remind me of the joy I had with that.” Penelope laughs heartily when I say ropes hanging from her ceiling might alarm first-time visitors!

Of the filming itself she says, “It was an incredible experience, because I am in a blinding spotlight, and I couldn’t see beyond it. It was all darkness, and I’m performing on a mirrored platform. All I could think was, I’m never going to do this again, which made me unhappy, I’m terrified and the fear is kind of beautiful, and I so don’t want to disappoint Rob Marshall, the director.”

The movie Nine, an adaptation of Tommy Tune’s Broadway hit ( based on Fellini’s famous film “8½”) also stars Sophia Loren, Judi Dench, Nicole Kidman, Marion Cotillard, Stacy Ferguson and Kate Hudson. It is one of 2009′s most eagerly awaited events. And it is another Weinstein Company effort. Ah, yes, the world is breathing easier!

I said to Penelope that I’d always thought a dance background — no matter what you eventually end up doing — improves discipline in general. “You are right! A dancer’s life is hard. And so is an actor’s, though most people don’t see it that way. They only see the glamour. But that discipline helps when I have to work 17 hours a day, or it’s cold, or hot or horribly uncomfortable in some way. Or just boring, which fimmaking often is. I feel I am more prepared to face an on set adversity.”

Up Next for Penelope is Broken Embraces, once again paired with Pedro Almodovar. She raves over her friend, “He is a genius. He writes the most incredible roles for women. In this one, ‘Broken Embraces,’ I am an actress playing two roles, one comedy, one drama, one real-life, one the movie she is making. A movie-within-a-movie. It’s complex, mind-blowing. I am so lucky to have him in my life.

“He is ITAL already ITAL writing another screenplay. He never stops. And he never compromises. He is totally honest. I think he would give his life for his movies; he is that passionate. He loves all movies, and sees everything. We are ITAL both ITAL obsessed with movies, actually.”

I ask if, in her passion for movies she can still lose herself in them? Forget that she herself is an actress?

“Oh, yes I can. I don’t think I will ever lose that. Especially if the movie is good. Then I never think about the technique or the camera or lighting or I wonder how many takes ITAL that ITAL took, or why wasn’t this a close-up or long-shot. I become an ordinary audience.”

But, what if the movie isn’t good? Penelope laughs, “Oh, God. Then I totally exhaust myself picking it apart. I leave the theater feeling I’d just come off that set, on a bad day. It’s much easier for me when the movie is good!”

I congratulate Penelope again on her nomination. I ask, because it’s the tiresome but necessary question, if it ITAL really ITAL matters to her if she wins? “Hmmm…what can I say? It’s not a lie that it is an honor to be nominated, and if I don’t win, I won’t be any less honored, but…look, ask anyone who is nominated. No matter what you think you feel about awards, when you’re there, sitting in that seat, with those people, all dressed up–ITAL of course ITAl you want to win!”

Source: Variety

Performance by an actress in a supporting role
Amy Adams in Doubt
Penélope Cruz in Vicky Cristina Barcelona
Viola Davis in Doubt
Taraji P. Henson in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Marisa Tomei in The Wrestler

The awards will be handed out Feb. 22 at the Kodak Theater in Los Angeles, airing on ABC.

The actress – who stars opposite boyfriend Javier Bardem and Scarlett Johansson in the Golden Globe Award-winning flick – admits she was shocked when Woody awarded her with the memento, because it was so personal.

She tells British movie magazine Total Film, “Actually I got a souvenir. I got his glasses as a present.

“And it’s my treasure. I love those glasses. He only has two pairs and he gave me one pair.”

Source: Showbiz Spy

Whilse on the subject, like mentioned yesterday Penélope didn’t win for supporting actress, but all was not lost for Vicky Cristina Barcelona. In a surprise win, it won for best motion picture musical or comedy! In the other categories, Javier Bardem lost to Colin Farrell and Sally Hawkins won over Rebecca Hall.

Miss Cruz didn’t win for Supporting Actress, that honor went to Kate Winslet instead, but congrats to Penelope for the nomination.

Miss Cruz unfortunately did win not for Vicky Cristina Barcelona in the Supporting Actress category, that went to the lovely Kate Winslet for The Reader instead. Still Penélope was the apitamy of elegance and glamour at the event.

Check out over 100 photos from the show below.

The BAFTA longlists include 15 contenders in each category, from which the five nominees will be chosen in the second round of voting. Once the nominees are finalized, the whole membership votes again to decide the best film, four acting prizes and film not in the English language. In all remaining categories, the members of each chapter (or jury) determine the vote.

The awards will take place Feb. 8 at London’s Royal Opera House.

Leading Actresss
Angelina Jolie – Changeling
Anne Hathaway – Rachel Getting Married
Cate Blanchett – The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Frances McDormand – Burn After Reading
Kate Winslet – Revolutionary Road
Kate Winslet – The Reader
Keira Knightley – The Duchess
Kristen Scott Thomas – I’ve Loved You So Long
Meryl Streep – Mamma Mia!
Meryl Streep – Doubt
Nicole Kidman – Australia
Penelope Cruz – Elegy
Rebecca Hall – Vicky Cristina Barcelona
Sally Hawkins – Happy-Go-Lucky
Scarlett Johansson – Vicky Cristina Barcelona

Supporting Actress
Amy Adams – Doubt
Charlotte Rampling – The Duchess
Elsa Zylberstein – I’ve Loved You So Long
Emma Thompson- Brideshead Revisited
Freida Pinto – Slumdog Millionaire
Judi Dench – Quantum of Solace
Julie Walters – Mamma Mia!
Kathy Bates – Revolutionary Road
Marisa Tomei – The Wrestler
Penélope Cruz – Vicky Cristina Barcelona
Rebecca Hall – Frost/Nixon
Tilda Swinton – The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Tilda Swinton – Burn After Reading
Vera Farmiga – The Boy in the Striped Pajamas
Viola Davis – Doubt

Source: Variety

Best Supporting Actress
Viola Davis – Doubt
Vera Farmiga – Nothing But the Truth
Taraji P. Henson – The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Marisa Tomei – The Wrestler
Kate Winslet – The Reader
Penelope Cruz – Vicky Cristina Barcelona