Her sensational charisma and screen presence, as a sex worker who gives birth to the movie’s hero in the opening sequence, provide the motivating power for the drama.
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Live Flesh (1997)Īnother short appearance from Cruz in this early movie of delicious brashness from Almodóvar, loosely adapted from the novel by Ruth Rendell. The entire cast and crew become involved in a scheme for him to escape.Īs Isabel in Live Flesh.
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The production runs to farcical problems, at least partly because an anti-Franco director, serving a jail term as a political prisoner, is doing day-release manual labour on the set. Cruz is on regal form as Macarena, a gorgeous film diva from the 50s who is returning to her Spanish homeland after a triumphant Hollywood career to play Queen Isabella of Castille in a preposterous US-Spanish co-production. It has become a cliche to compare Cruz to Sophia Loren, but it’s unavoidable in this enjoyable, silly meta-movie comedy from Trueba. In this remake, Cruz reprises her role, but opposite a more self-consciously starry male lead this arguably unbalances their relationship, and the film’s whole emotional ecosystem. This was a Hollywood remake of the far superior Spanish mystery thriller Open Your Eyes (see below), in which a wealthy man gets cosmetic surgery to repair his face, which has been ruined in a car crash, and falls in love with a beautiful woman (Cruz). And in fact, after filming Vanilla Sky, the couple (Penélocruise? Tomcruz?) had a three-year relationship that reportedly foundered on Cruz’s inability to accept Cruise’s Scientological strictures. Vanilla Sky (2001)Ĭruz co-starring with Tom Cruise should theoretically have been a conflation of pure physical gorgeousness to blow the roof off any cinema in the world. It’s a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it performance and yet her appearance flavours the entire movie. She is, of all things, a baggage-handler driving one of the luggage carts across the asphalt when she is distracted by her husband, a ground-crew guy played by Antonio Banderas – which leads to a fateful revelation. I’m So Excited (2013)Ĭruz’s screen career will always be shaped by her magnificent work with the great master Pedro Almodóvar and their first joint appearance on this list is Almodóvar’s modestly intended comic romp set aboard a plane, in which his longtime leading lady contributes a high-spirited cameo at the start. A sweet, gentle, uncomplicatedly sensual movie that established the keynote to Cruz’s own sexuality on screen. This takes place just before the Spanish civil war: an army deserter fetches up at a villa owned by an unrepentant old anarchist who is only too happy to offer hospitality, and the fugitive finds himself highly enamoured of the owner’s daughters, especially the innocent Luz, played by Cruz. The Spanish director Fernando Trueba won the best foreign language Oscar for this movie, a variation on Don Siegel’s US civil war drama The Beguiled, giving Cruz an important early role.
It’s interesting to see a nonfiction film that addresses Cruz’s now firmly established motherly image. Cruz presents the film and interviews physicians, careworkers, parents and of course the children themselves – which she does with heartfelt sincerity and compassion. This is a 45-minute documentary directed by and starring Cruz, about the work of the Uno Entre Cien Mil foundation, a Spanish NGO that raises money to fund research projects into childhood leukemia. Soy Uno Entre Cien Mil (or, I am One In A Hundred Thousand) (2016) Yet there is a disconnect: Cruz can’t help but be warm and romantic, while Depp’s Sparrow is a fastidious, oddly asexual turn. Johnny Depp returned as the roguish pirate Jack Sparrow and Cruz enjoyably plays fiery pirate Angelica, an old rival or maybe old flame of Jack’s. She did it well, striking some meet-cute sparks with one of the biggest franchise stars of the era.
Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (2011)Ĭruz had worked with director Rob Marshall on the toe-curling musical Nine, but this was something more palatable: a rare chance for her to play mainstream Hollywood comedy. Photograph: Universal Pictures/Allstar 18. As Pelagia in Captain Corelli’s Mandolin.
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