Stunning actress Penélope Cruz doesn’t have a “prime.” She keeps getting better with age, her roles more focused, her family time increasingly important. In promoting her new movie Everybody Knows — in which she stars alongside her real-life husband, Javier Bardem — Cruz revealed to Marie Claire what day-to-day life is like as, relatively speaking, Spanish royalty.
Here are the big takeaways:
On working with Bardem:
“Obviously we can’t choose parts just for logistical reasons, like, ‘Oh, let’s work together more often because it’s easier.’ No. In fact, it’s not something we want to do that often,” she says,“partly out of a desire to protect what we have. On the one hand, it’s easier because you know that person, he knows you, and the way you work is very similar.”
“On the other hand, the idea of it happening every year is kind of scary. You never know if that might mix things up too much. My instinct is that it would. I think it’s better for it to just be once in a while, even though they’ve been very good experiences.” She pauses. “Or if we do work together,” she adds, “we wouldn’t want to always play a couple.
On motherhood:
“There are a lot of things that have surprised me about [motherhood]. It’s like a revolution inside you—a very animal-like one. The whole world looks different. You’ll never think of yourself first again, and I think that’s a very good thing. It happens in a second.”
On advocating for women who are victims of sexual misconduct or harassment:
“A teacher or a doctor, they’re not going to get a microphone and somebody asking them: ‘What’s your situation? Are you suffering these things?’ So it’s important to me to make clear that I’m not just talking about our industry. It affects women in all industries and every single country, and I speak for them, the ones that are never going to be asked that question.” Then she adds:
“It’s good to remember that men can be victims of this too. This can’t be about more division. If we don’t do this together, it’s useless.”
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