Penelope Cruz Sanchez

Penelope Cruz Sanchez is the daughter of Eduardo Cruz, a Madrid hairdresser, and Encarna Sanchez, a hairdresser from Madrid. As a young child she was an obsessive performer, and would reenact commercials on TV for the entertainment of her parents. However, she chose to concentrate on dance. She continued her dance training by working with several well-known dancers after spending nine years learning classical ballet at Spain's National Conservatory. She discovered her true passion at the age of 15, when she smashed more than 300 other girls during an audition with an agency for talents. The agency offered her roles in Spanish TV and music videos. The contract resulted in a variety of performances, which opened the doors to a career on the big screen. Cruz was first seen in a movie in The Greek Labyrinth (1993). (The Greek Labyrinth). Following that she was briefly featured in Framed (1992) by Timothy Dalton. Her final film, Belle Epoque (1992), was an Oscar-winning production in which she was one of four sisters who were competing to win the love of a handsome deserter army soldier. The film was awarded many Goyas, Spanish equivalent of Academy Awards. The actress continued to add films to her list of credits, growing by three or four per year. Soon Cruz was the leading lady in Spanish cinema. Live Flesh (1997) (Live Flesh) offered her the chance to work with renowned Spanish director Pedro Almodovar (who would later be her ticket to international fame), and the same year she was the lead actress in the thriller/drama/mystery/sci-fi film Open Your Eyes (1997), a huge hit in Spain that earned eight Goyas (though none for Cruz). The luck of her life changed dramatically in 1998, when the movie-industry comedy La Nina De Tus Ojos (1998) earned her the Best Actress Goya. Cruz made a few more forays into English-language film, however, her first major international hit was Almodovar's All About My Mother (1999) in which she played an unchaste but well-meaning nun. The film was flooded with awards and praises, Cruz was suddenly sought-after on both sides of the Atlantic. The American comedy Woman on Top (2001) which was her subsequent major film, follows a chef who has both incredible culinary skills as well as severe motion sickness. When she was in America,