LONDON: Penelope Cruz plays a barren wife in one of her new movies, and a doomed fiancée in another, but her own family life is strictly off limits.
The 39-year-old Spanish mother-of-two has worked with directors Pedro Almodovar and Woody Allen, toyed around with Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean and engaged in intimate scenes with Michael Fassbender as his fiancée in this year’s Cormac McCarthy-scripted The Counselor.
When asked how she and husband Javier Bardem share child-minding chores, she said: “I don’t talk about them, in interviews, my kids. I don’t talk about them because I really try to protect them from that other part of the business.”
The Madrid native does talk about the roles she is taking now that she is approaching middle age (albeit still on the younger side of mature); roles that may surprise fans. “I love not feeling safe when I get to the set,” said Cruz, wearing a dark-coloured parka to counter the chilliness.
The “not safe” role she wants to discuss is her portrayal of Gemma, an infertile woman, in Twice Born. The film, set at the time of the 1990s Bosnia war, portrays a love affair between a daredevil American photographer, Diego, and Cruz’s academic researcher.
Here’s what else she had to say about what drew her to play Gemma, her experiences in Sarajevo and her views on movies that glamorize violence — though she says The Counselor doesn’t.
Q: This is the second film version of a Mazzantini novel, after Don’t Move in 2004, that you’ve appeared in. What drew you to Gemma and her growing awareness of her infertility?
A: She’s a complicated woman, not politically correct at all, and that’s what I love about her. I read this book and I was fascinated by the way she talks about motherhood or about the conflict that this woman goes through — knowing it is not possible for her to have children she becomes obsessed with it … when I closed the last page I was 100% sure I wanted to play this character.
Q: The film is set against the backdrop of the Bosnian war, the bloodiest conflict in Europe since World War Two. Did that history have any resonance for you during the filming in Sarajevo, which was one of the worst killing fields of the war?
A: This story … describes a war that was complex, like anywhere, but even when you talk to a Bosnian and a Serbian and a Croatian they all tell you we wish we could explain to you how this got so out of control but even for them…it’s hard to explain how things got to be so atrocious.
Q: The ‘other’ Cruz movie, The Counselor, out now in the US and Europe, also is violent but in a different way.
A: I like the movie, it is really interesting and smart but I have doubts about the violence. There is one scene that I still have not seen, the one with Brad Pitt where he dies, the way he dies. I think violence should not be glamorised. It doesn’t make it cool, you know.
Published in The Express Tribune, December 6th, 2013.
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