CRUZ CONTROL
DETERMINATION PASSION, AND SETTING CLEAR BOUNDARIES HAVE HELPED PENÉLOPE CRUZ BECOME ONE OF THE WORLD’S MOST SUCCESSFUL AND FÊTED ACTORS. HERE, SHE TEACHES ROSIE GREEN SOME LIFE LESSONS
Red’s cover star Penélope Cruz talks parenthood, hormones and the definition of beauty
Anna Friel blagged me into Madonna’s party, Beyoncé coveted my handbag, SJP didn’t make a fuss when I gaffer-taped her boobs (long story). Your average star will go a long way to win your affection. But not award-winning actress and Lancôme ambassadress Penélope Cruz.
Penélope Cruz is direct, purposeful, passionate and serious, but she’s not a people pleaser.
If that sounds critical, it’s not meant to be. She started dancing at the age of four and began her career in the film industry when she was 17 years old (she’s now 46). And it seems like she’s sussed out what she needs to do to maintain her boundaries.
She’s fiercely protective of her family’s privacy (it would be easier to get Trump to declare himself a feminist than to make her spill on her husband, actor Javier Bardem) and her wellbeing, particularly her sleep.
‘If I don’t have at least seven hours, I feel it later. I can lose focus, I can get moody. It is one of the toughest things about having children – you have to wake up earlier. I say to myself, “Go to dinner or go to bed? If I go out, how am I going to feel tomorrow?” Sleep always wins. I prefer to prioritise the rest so that I can be focused and strong later.’
I wonder if she finds it as easy to carve out time for herself away from her young family (she has two children with Bardem: Leo, nine, and Luna, six). ‘I’m not so good at it,’ she admits in her velvety Spanish accent. ‘Because I’m a very nurturing person by nature, I have to keep reminding myself to also create time for myself. It’s not something that comes to me naturally, I tend to do the opposite, but I’m working on it!’
We are talking on the phone, pre-lockdown, me in London, she in Madrid. I’d flown to the Spanish capital a couple of weeks earlier, planning to interview her at the same time as we shot the pictures on these pages, but she had a cold that made her feel ‘half dead’. So she did the shoot (nailing each picture in about 10 minutes, something that usually takes hours), but we only snatched the briefest of hellos before she left.
It’s another example of her setting her boundaries. So while it was an awful long way to travel just to observe, on reflection, I respected (and admired) the fact that she put her health before her work.
Later, she tells me, ‘Feeling good is not about getting your hair and make-up done. It’s about being healthy, strong, feeling nourished and giving your body and mind what it needs. If I don’t have these things covered, it’s hard for me to feel centred. It’s very important for me to eat well, eat clean and eat healthily.’ Cruz has been vocal about her need to avoid gluten, dairy and sugar – all glow-getting recommendations of A-list skin doctor Dr Nigma Talib, who, she says has ‘changed her life’. She found out about the doctor when she asked Sienna Miller why she looked so good. ‘I also decided to start meditating again – transcendental meditation – it really helps when I do it.’
And it’s not exactly as if her work has suffered because of her priorities. Cruz is an unquestionably great actor. She has an Oscar, Bafta and multiple Goyas to prove it. She’s achieved both commercial success in films such as Pirates Of The Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, which took more than $350m worldwide, as well as critical acclaim for her performances in films including All The Pretty Horses, alongside Matt Damon, and Volver and Broken Embraces, both directed by Pedro Almodóvar.
But all this didn’t just land in her lap. Cruz has worked ferociously to achieve her success, spending her youth dancing at Spain’s National Conservatory. How was that? ‘I was very disciplined,’ she tells me. ‘I worked hard. My parents and friends had to tell me to slow down. I just wanted to keep learning and taking classes. I was never interested in going out.’
‘WE ARE ALL JUGGLING. EVERYONE HAS TRICKY SITUATIONS’
If drive and talent are crucial to her success, it would be disingenuous not to mention her extraordinary looks. And on the Red shoot, her presence has the curious effect on the crew that comes with exceptional beauty. As she appears from the make-up room, the mood changes. All of the crew are professional enough not to stare, but nevertheless we subtly change our body language and dial up our conversations. We all clock the lustrous hair, doe eyes, high cheekbones and the sensuous mouth that is at once generous and defiant. Not to mention the long nose that elevates her from being very pretty to unquestionably beautiful.
So how does she feel about her beauty? ‘Uncomfortable,’ she says. ‘I don’t think of myself in those terms.’ After years spent around celebrities and models, I’ve noticed a conflict in the very beautiful. It’s undeniably part of their success, but it’s unearned, so to them it feels cheap. I suggest to Cruz that, unlike the rest of us, she knows for certain that beauty doesn’t hold the answers to life’s problems. ‘But everyone knows that, don’t they?’ she reasons. ‘We are all juggling. Everyone has tricky situations. The ones I have to face might be different from yours.’
She has been vocal about the pressures women, and she especially, face post-pregnancy, both internal and external. She told Gwyneth Paltrow at a Goop summit: ‘The first [time I gave birth], I pushed myself to be superwoman, like, “I’ll have a natural birth and then 12 hours later I’m out of the hospital in high heels.” Now I look back and say, “Who asked you to do this? Who asked you to not delegate, to feel like you have to do everything yourself 24 hours a day and forget to take care of yourself?”’
She has talked publicly about her struggles with hormones, and she’s now so passionate about managing them that the books on her bedside table are about nutrition and medicine. Last year, she got angry about society’s avoidance of the subject. ‘There are too many taboos surrounding women’s bodies and I think it equals a big lack of respect. You might be thinking, “What is the relationship between hormones and respect?” But it’s completely related. Words and phrases such as period, postpartum depression, menopause; even today, you bring those words up at a dinner table and it makes people nervous.’
Cruz has been married for 10 years. Her romantic history has played out on screen: Tom Cruise fell for her on the set of Vanilla Sky in 2001, and she later dated Matthew Mcconaughey, meaning she has the accolade of dating two men who have been named on People magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive list. In 2008, while working on Vicky Cristina Barcelona with Javier Bardem, the stars’ friendship become something else. In 2010, Cruz and Bardem married in secret, and the couple had their first child the following year.
I ask her if she thinks the aesthetic pressures will be greater for her daughter than they have been for her, and whether she thinks beauty is still prized above brains in women. ‘I think it probably is, but I’m also very optimistic,’ she says. ‘Women are occupying a new and more defined place in society. There are more women in important positions in politics, industry, economics and in education at the highest levels.’ She does worry about the effects of social media, though. ‘I think it’s difficult for teenagers now,’ she admits. ‘It’s like putting people out there in the
jungle with no rules. It feels unregulated. It’s the responsibility of the adults and government to create rules for the protection of kids and teenagers.’
Cruz sees her Lancôme role as a positive one for womanhood because, as a company, it is widening the definition of what is considered beautiful.
‘I keep admiring them more and more because they do what they say. At Lancôme, there’s Isabella [Rossellini], she’s over 60, then there are women in their 50s, I’m
46, some of the ambassadors are 20. I think seeing diversity should be a natural thing. It’s not as though one skin colour, shape or age is beautiful.’ Cruz has a genuine love for the brand’s products, too, saying Génifique serum ‘really makes a difference when you use it’, and that she’s ‘worn Trésor since I was 13’.
But has she always been confident about her looks?
She pauses. ‘Hmm, I was not too confident, but I didn’t grow up too focused on them.’ Does she feel more self-assured now than then? ‘I wouldn’t change the way I feel now for the way I felt when I was 20. There were some insecurities about things that you later realise are not important.’ Any teenage beauty disasters? ‘When I was 13,
I had a very strong perm in my hair. I was inspired by Julia Roberts and the girl in the Michael Jackson video for The Way You Make Me Feel.’ So how would she feel if her daughter Luna went for a spiral perm? ‘I’ll deal with that when the moment comes,’ she laughs. ‘But I think I will have to remember how I was at 13. I had a very strong will, I was very stubborn, so let’s see. It’s probably karma!’
Parenthood is something she obviously takes seriously. ‘When you become a mother, your priorities become very clear. The most important thing in my life is to raise my children. I’m lucky that I have a job where we can all be together. I feel that this is the pay-off for working very hard from when I was so young, but I don’t take it for granted. I am very grateful.’
Does she ever let loose, party hard and drink a vat-load of Champagne? ‘The great thing is, I’ve never been interested in drugs or alcohol,’ she says. But she does confess to letting that famous mane down on Oscars’ night. ‘I went to Guy Oseary’s party. It was great and I saw lots of friends [also in attendance: Renée Zellweger, Jennifer Aniston, Leonardo Dicaprio and plural Kardashians]. A lot of them said, ‘Wow, I can’t believe it’s 2am and you’re still here!’
‘But,’ she adds, ‘I do that once every two years!’
Penélope Cruz. Driven, determined, and nobody’s pushover.