SHE is one of Hollywood’s sexiest bombshells but Penelope Cruz says there was once a time when she refused to film naked love scenes.
During her stellar career the 49-year-old Spaniard has stunned movie-goers with raunchy roles such as her strip to stockings and a sexy laced corset in 2009 movie Nine and scorching sex scenes with Emile Hirsch in 2012 drama Twice Born.
But as a 20-year-old wannabe actress she turned down her first big break in America after discovering she would have to strip off for steamy sex scenes.
Young Penelope — whose latest movie, the biopic Ferrari, is out on Boxing Day — flew from her home in Spain to the USA to audition for the part, but on arrival she was horrified to learn the German director had failed to tell her she would need to get naked for the role.
She explains: “The first opportunity I had to do a casting the director said, ‘You need to sign this clause that says you will do a couple of sex scenes’.
“I was very shocked by that because it was not in the script before. I was in LA alone and I said, ‘I don’t understand because I had this script for a year and that was not there’.
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“I didn’t like that game, I didn’t like that I was not told before I got on that 14-hour flight.
“I said, ‘No I am not signing’. They said, ‘OK, you’re not doing the screen test’.
“I went into the room and I spoke very little English, but for some reason that day I could speak English.
Scorching sex scenes
“I said, ‘Listen, my values that my parents taught me mean a lot to me and this is a test. It’s not right or wrong to do those scenes. The problem is the ethical issue that you didn’t tell me before I got on the plane and you sent me a different script.
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“But I want to do the test for the script that you sent me a week before’.
“I knew from their faces that they were going to let me do the screen test because they knew what I was telling them was true.
“And I knew I was not going to get the movie because the director was very angry that I didn’t sign.”
She was right about not getting the part, yet Penelope says it was the best decision she ever made.
She reveals: “It was a power thing and I had zero power but I had my dignity and my values. It was very sad. I remember, on the flight back to Spain, I knew I had done the right thing.
“It was the time in my life I felt most proud of something I had done in my career.”
She added on the Five Things With Lynn Hirschberg podcast: “I had to do other scenes that were love scenes or sex scenes, nothing hardcore, but at that moment I was not ready and it was a proud moment for me.
“It made me best friends with myself. I didn’t get the part and I didn’t care.”
Two years earlier she had appeared topless in her first role, in 1992 Spanish movie Jamón Jamón, alongside Javier Bardem, now 54, who later became her husband.
But looking back she admits she was too young and not “ready” for the nudity.
Years on, Penelope has gone on to become one of the most successful modern stars in Hollywood.
She has made more than 60 films and in 2001 alone she made Vanilla Sky with Tom Cruise, who she went on to date for three years, Don’t Tempt Me alongside husband Javier, Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, starring Nicolas Cage, and crime thriller Blow.
In 2008 she received an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in Vicky Cristina Barcelona, another flick starring her actor hubby as well as Scarlett Johansson, and she has received numerous other awards and nominations.
It is safe to say many of her provocative performances leave little to the imagination.
As well as Nine and Twice born, she sizzled in thriller The Counselor, with co-star Michael Fassbender.
By 2014 Esquire magazine voted her the Sexiest Woman Alive — and she has been in hot demand ever since.
In Ferrari this month she features, with castmates Adam Driver and Shailene Woodley, as Laura, the wife and business partner of Italian motor racing mogul and supercar firm founder Enzo Ferrari.
Set in the summer of 1957, the plot details how Ferrari’s car empire was in crisis and the ex-racer-turned-entrepreneur pushes himself and his drivers to the edge as they launch into the Mille Miglia, a treacherous 1,000-mile race across Italy using normal roads.
Yet despite all the accolades, starring roles and her new movie, Penelope says that family is what she cherishes the most.
She has two children, son Leo, 12 and daughter Luna, ten with Javier, who she married in secret in 2010. The family live in Madrid.
On balancing motherhood with being a movie star, Penelope told the Chanel Connects podcast: “My number one priority is raising my children and not being away from them.
“I feel I have been very lucky, because for the last few years I have been working in the summer somewhere we can all go together.
‘It is always the sea and the beach’
“If I am working in the winter I have been able to do it in the place where we are living, so they are going to school and we are going to work.
“I knew that is what I wanted from the moment I became a mother, and we are very lucky because we are able to depend on others.
“I feel that I have to balance both but I am very grateful for the opportunity. I have to say no to a lot of things, but I don’t have that ambition. My number one ambition is to raise the children and be with them and be able to combine that with my job so they can see that mum enjoys her work.
“They come to the set and see that our work is teamwork and I am not so important but we all need each other to make it happen.”
As she approaches her 50th birthday next April there is no doubt the chatty, down-to-earth actress has figured out how to lead a full and happy life.
And these days her idea of living heaven is being at the beach with her hunky husband and kids or in the privacy of their home, thousands of miles away from the glitzy Hollywood scene.
“It’s always the sea and the beach,” she says.
“Looking at the sun and touching the sea recharges my batteries more than anything else. One day there can make me feel so much stronger and connected to myself and to everything important. I wish I had it closer to where I live.
“I like being on a boat but it’s different when you have children because you cannot relax for one second.
“Of course, I like it, but I don’t want to go on holiday without my kids.
“My husband also loves the sea and he was born on the Canary Islands, where my best friend is from.
“I don’t go so often to the sea because I live in the city and the closest thing would be four hours by car. I think people are great here and there are so many things to love, like the food and the history.
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“Also because I think it’s a really healthy lifestyle when you are raising children because of all the families here.
“I love my city and I love my country very much and that is why this is the place we chose to live.”
