Penelope Cruz she needs no introduction… The 49-year-old Oscar-winning star of countless films has an irresistible charm. The combination of mysticism and personality is well set for her. “I’m programmed to protect myself”she said in a recent interview with “Elle.”

Her “hot” demeanor—she’s a natural comedic talent, her smile takes up a greedy expanse of her face, and she talks with genuine tenderness about the last time she saw Karl Lagerfeld, when he convinced her to take a nighttime stroll through Central Park—comes into a stark contrast to her last role, Laura Ferrari, the cruel wife of Enzo Ferrari in the film ‘Ferrari’.

It’s not the first time she’s played a biographical figure, and it’s certainly not her first “tribute to a woman in a difficult situation.” She played her friend Donatella Versace in the movie “The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story”.

“I’m afraid of driving,” says the famous actress in her recent interview. “My sister was run over by a car in front of me when I was eight or nine years old. I remember he was wearing a red coat. And for me, time stopped. It’s a big trauma, because I saw her lose consciousness.”reveals.

Her sister survived, but the grown-up Cruise suspects she would “go hysterical” if she witnessed such a serious accident now. He has difficulty regulating the degree of empathy he feels. There’s a “dance back and forth between fiction and reality,” which he realizes “plays to a certain stereotype” of the actors, but that doesn’t make it any less real.

“I feel it – it’s like hypersensitivity in every way – visually, to sound, to people’s feelings. It’s one of the main things I deal with in therapy: how to find a balance so that I can continue to feel these things without making them my own.”

Penelope Cruz

Thanks to movies like “Live Flesh” and “All About My Mother”, Cruise has become a mother in the eyes of the world long before she became a real mother. And now, he says, “at my age, 80% of the characters I play will be about motherhood or divorce or abandonment or characters who didn’t want or couldn’t have children or who lost their children. I’ve been playing mothers since I was very young”.

Cruz is extremely protective of her children with Javier BardemLuna, 10, and Leo, 12 (her production company is called Moonlyon), more than you might expect for someone in the limelight.

He will not confirm or deny whether they are creative people like their mother, who studied classical ballet for nine years at the National Conservatory of Spainor their father, a one-time aspiring painter and scion of the Spanish film aristocracy. “It’s up to them to decide if they’re going to have a job that’s more exposed to the public or not. They can talk about it when they’re ready.”

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It should come as no surprise that her kids don’t have social media accounts, but they also don’t even have phones.

“It’s so easy to manipulate, especially if you have a brain that’s still forming. And who pays the price? Not us, not our generation, who, maybe at 25, learned how a BlackBerry works. It’s a cruel experiment on children, on teenagers,” he says with disarming honesty.

Who needs TikTok when you have Javier Bardem at home?He sings and is a great dancer. And he does this amazing Mick Jagger impersonation. He will imitate Al Pacino and De Niro talking to each other. It’s incredible,” he says with a smile.

Penelope Cruz

Even now, on the threshold of 50 years and after more than 60 films to her credit, she has a hard time discussing fame and struggles with her build. She has found a knack for isolating herself, doing fewer films.

In addition to her excitement for a movie musical, Cruise is currently directing and producing a documentary, a “passion project,” according to her. She spends her time in selected areas of Madrid, where she goes to a public gym several times a week.

Penelope Cruz

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