An interview with Penélope Cruz from 2007. Oscar buzz for her standout performance in Volver had began. She joined Harry Smith to talk about the film which was her third collaboration with director Pedro Almodovar.

Congratulations to our girl for this wonderful honor!

Penelope Cruz – who’s appearing in two current films, Vicky Cristina Barcelona and Elegy – will be honored as the outstanding performer of the year at the Santa Barbara Film Festival, which runs Jan. 22-Feb.1. Cruz will be presented with the award at the Arlington Theatre on Jan. 31.

“There are few actresses who can today be described as international movie goddesses, and this year, with her exceptional work in Elegy and Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Penelope Cruz has earned that description,” SBIFF executive director Roger Durling said.

Cruz was first introduced to American audiences in the Spanish films Jamon, Jamon and Belle Epoque. She frequently works with director Pedro Almodovar, appearing in his films Live Flesh, All About My Mother, Volver, for which she earned a best actress Academy Award nomination, and the upcoming Los Abrazos Rotos.

Source: HollywoodReporter.com

Better late than never! Check out our scans from Glamour‘s August issue which featured Miss Cruz on it’s cover.

Penélope Cruz, Javier Bardem and Woody Allen have been busy promoting Vicky Cristina Barcelona in Spain. On September 20, they attended a screening of the film in Barcelona. Penélope looked gorgeous in a black number and an up-do… Yet another beautiful look from this classy lady!

Penélope Cruz for Gear magazine, back in 1999.

Penélope showing her sultrier style of dancing in Noel from 2004. Let’s face it – the girl knows how to move!

A vintage treat! Pe for Spec magazine back some eight years ago. She has a bit of Consuela Castillo look in these! I absolutely love this set.

As the summer blockbuster season fades, the movie industry now moves into the end-of-the-year serious mode in which Academy Award-caliber films are released.

One of the early contenders has to be Elegy, based upon the Philip Roth short novel, The Dying Animal.

Ben Kingsley and Penelope Cruz lead a talented cast that includes Dennis Hopper, Patricia Clarkson and Peter Sarsgaard. The movie’s explorations of the complexities of love and sex ultimately provide a somber tone despite some witty observations by the Hopper character, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet George O’Hearn.

Penélope Cruz is expected to attend the London Film Festival for the premiere of Vicky Cristina Barcelona. Some other celebrities scheduled/rumored to attend are Benicio Del Toro, Eva Green, Gwyneth Paltrow, Omar Sharif, Liam Neeson and Rachel Weisz.

The LFF runs from October 15 to 30. Booking opens to British Film Institute members on September 24 and to the public on September 27. Box office: 0207 928 3232 and www.bfi.org.uk/lff.

Sony Pictures Classics, renewing its longtime ties to Pedro Almodovar, has acquired North American rights to the writer-director’s latest film, Broken Embraces, starring Penelope Cruz.

Cruz, who received a best actress Oscar nomination for Almodovar’s previous film, Volver, will play a provincial actress in the movie, which has been shooting in Madrid and the Canary Islands. Working from his own screenplay, Almodovar has described the movie as an amour fou involving four characters (played by Cruz, Blanca Portillo, Lluis Homar and Jose Luis Gomez) in the style of a hard-boiled, ’50s American film noir. The cast also includes Rossy de Palma, Kiti Manver, Chus Lampreave, Lola Duenas and Angela Molina, who will play Cruz’s mother.

Produced by the director’s brother, Augustin Almodovar, Embraces is the 10th Almodovar film that SPC has handled. In addition to Volver, SPC was the domestic distributor for Almodovar’s foreign-language Oscar winner All About My Mother, his best original screenplay Oscar winner Talk to Her and foreign-language nominee Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown.

SPC brokered the deal with the Almodovars’ production company El Deseo. Universal International Studio, Uni’s foreign production arm, is co-financing the film with El Deseo. Uni’s Focus is handling worldwide sales outside of Spain, France, the U.K., Benelux and Switzerland.

Source: HollywoodReporter.com

Spanish-born star Penélope Cruz talks to John Hiscock about working with directors Woody Allen and Pedro Almodóvar – and her habit of becoming romantically involved with her leading men

Penélope Cruz doesn’t like talking about her personal life, and blames the internet. “I have a big reluctance to talk about anything that might later be misconstrued,” she says.

“I was not worried before, but since the internet, every time you do an interview, three hundred other people are going to take that story and turn it into something else. I wish I could be more relaxed and funnier in interviews but I can’t because I always regret it afterwards. I take my work very seriously and I don’t want it to be manipulated into something else.”

Another reason for her reluctance is probably her aversion to being asked about her becoming romantically involved with some of her leading men. To her irritation, reports of that aspect of her life have often taken prominence over discussions of her acting, and she has always denied suggestions that she has deliberately set her sights on her male co-stars.

“I wouldn’t describe myself as the most stable person,” says Penelope Cruz, who has played some of the movies’ more explosive, damaged and exciting women of the past decade. “I try. Who can say they’re stable? Maybe someone who’s enjoying a lot of mental peace, but I don’t know them.”

Calling from Madrid, where she is currently shooting director Pedro Almodóvar’s Broken Embraces, Cruz sounds somber. There is only a hint of the warm, passionate quality that she naturally exudes in face-to-face conversation, a quality that not surprisingly attracts her male co-stars and then, if a romance starts, the paparazzi.

The 34-year-old actress is tired of being more famous for her boyfriends – her exes include Tom Cruise and Matthew McConaughey – than her work. So she is in lockdown mode, poised to deflect questions about her current boyfriend, Spanish actor Javier Bardem, who earlier this year won an Oscar as best supporting actor for his work in No Country for Old Men (2007).

Woody Allen’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona will open the Zabaltegi Pearls section of September’s San Sebastián Film Festival in Spain with Allen, Penélope Cruz, Javier Bardem and Rebecca Hall in attendance. The event will take place September 19, 2008. Please refer to their official site for further information.