Penélope Cruz Sánchez was born on April 28, 1974. She is a Spanish actress. Originally a dancer, she soon moved into Spanish television, and since then she has appeared in a string of films, in Spanish, English, and other languages, with increasing success and numerous awards.
Cruz was born in Madrid and was named after a song by Joan Manuel Serrat. Her parents are Eduardo Cruz, a retailer, and Encarna Sánchez, a hairdresser. She was a dancer as a child and young teen. She completed 2º B.U.P. (2nd year of secondary school), but dropped out of school at the age of 15 after she beat more than 300 other girls at a talent agency audition. She received nine years of classic ballet training at the Conservatorio Nacional in Madrid, four years of dance performance with several dance courses at the Cristina Rota School in New York, and three years of Spanish Ballet with Ángela Garrido. She also had jazz dance courses with Raúl Caballero.
She first achieved fame when she appeared in the video clip La fuerza del destino for the Spanish synth-pop group Mecano. She later started a relationship with Nacho Cano, a member of the group, which lasted for several years.
She was a TV presenter for the teen-oriented program La Quinta Marcha, in collaboration with Jesús Vázquez.
Cruz's first major films were Jamón, Jamón and the more widely known (in the US) Belle Epoque, a film which won an Academy Award for Foreign Language Film.
In 1997, she starred as Sofía alongside Eduardo Noriega in Abre los Ojos, directed by Alejandro Amenábar, and in 2000 she appeared with Matt Damon in All the Pretty Horses. In 1999, she appeared in Pedro Almodóvar's Todo sobre mi madre, which won an Academy Award for Foreign Language Film.
In early 2001, she appeared in the film Vanilla Sky with Tom Cruise, which sparked a three-year romantic relationship with the actor. Vanilla Sky was the Hollywood remake of Abre los Ojos ("Open Your Eyes"), and she played the same part in both films.
Her younger sister Mónica Cruz closely resembles her: a similarity exploited for some Spanish TV ads. In the 2000s, Mónica left her dancing career and achieved note on her own in the youth-oriented TV series Un Paso Adelante. They are also distant cousins of Alexandra Cruz.
After her second appearance on the TV series Punk'd(her first backstage debut), and during an interview on CBS's The Early Show (aired on April 4, 2005), Cruz remarked that her friend, and Mexican actress Salma Hayek (also her Bandidas co-star), has threatened to "punk" Cruz for helping Ashton Kutcher with the bathroom trick at Kutcher's Geisha House, his second restaurant, in Hollywood, California.
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