Almodóvar makes his movies in sequence, so while Janis may not know what tragedies are just around the corner, Cruz knew all too well and started counting down the days to her toughest scenes. “I knew it would be hardcore adrenaline, probably the most intense shoot ever – and it was,” she said. Still, she held those feelings in check, as Janis must, until a climactic moment proved so gripping to film that Almodóvar had to help a devastated Cruz to get up from the floor.
“I wish you could do it without suffering so much,” Almodóvar told her then. But Cruz didn’t see things that way.
“Looking back, I don’t remember it as suffering,” she said, “because it was for her, it was for Janis, or for any women who could be in a similar situation of losing what they love most.” To me she was still alive. She is a real being that he made.”
So when Cruz says “Parallel Moms” is the hardest thing she’s ever done, she means it in a good way: Although Janis and Cruz are so similar at first, playing this woman took Cruz further from herself than she did. could have ever imagined. “I have a smile on my face because it has given me so much and made me feel like I was creative,” she insisted. “I was emotionally exhausted, but at the same time loved every second.”
ASK THE PEOPLE who best describe Penélope Cruz, and an adjective always comes up. “All my life I’ve been told how stubborn I am,” Cruz said, pausing for a moment. “I don’t know if it’s because I’m a Taurus.”
Either way, that stubbornness has served her well. When Cruz was 14 and looking to break into acting, she applied for a program for new faces in Madrid, led by the agent Katrina Bayonas. You had to be at least 16 to get in, so Cruz lied. Bayonas, suspecting the lie, gave Cruz a worldly scene from “Casablanca” to read, knowing the young girl would be up to her ears.