| By Fred Topel
In Theaters Now
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It’s pretty hard to make Penelope Cruz look bad. She’s looked worse for wear in films like Gothika, where she played a patient in an asylum, and Blow, where she played a stung out drug addict. But Don’t Move (Non ti muovere) presents her in a state so raw that it had to be enhanced.
“The character needed that,” Cruz said. “I mean, that woman has never been to the doctor or the dentist, does her own hair. She has this image of herself and I think that she makes herself look even more ugly because of her own self-esteem.”
As Italia, a poor woman who helps a doctor with car trouble and enters into a violent relationship, Cruz wears bags under her eyes, a gap in her front teeth and hair that would make the lead singer of Counting Crows buy her a bottle of Head and Shoulders.
“We did it together,” Cruz continued. “Me and Whitney James, the makeup artist and [director/star] Sergio [Castellitto] and his wife who wrote the book. There are four pages in the book that talk about the way she looks and why she looks like that, and her clothes. I went and I bought the clothes myself for the whole character with Margaret [Mazzantini], the author of the book, and every sweater that we bought was one dollar. That was one of the things that I got to do for the character.”
After Italia lets him into her home to use the phone, the doctor (Castellitto) rapes her. When he comes back to see her again, she allows him into her life in a full fledged affair. To prepare for the role, Cruz spoke with women at crisis centers as mental research to go with her physical preparations.
“I think that when you can get it, [research] is a great thing for you. When someone wants to share that with you, you do that with a lot of respect and you get to meet amazing people. I talked to people in those situations and people in places in the world, young girls who had gone through that even with their own families. The sad thing is that this character never recovers from it. She's not resisting, but she doesn't find a way to get over it and feel like she deserves something better in life.”
Get ready to see a lot of Penelope Cruz, because just weeks after Don’t Move plays the arthouse circuit, she’s kicking butt in the Paramount action/adventure Sahara. Later this year, expect Chromophobia and Bandidas as well. Then Cruz will reunite with director Pedro Almadovar for a yet undecided project.
“Right now, I don’t think that I'm going to work before I shoot with Pedro which will be in June. I'm going to be doing the publicity for Don't Move here [in Los Angeles] and in New York and really treating this movie the same way that I treat an American film, doing all the big shows and Jay Leno and doing everything that I would do for an American movie just to encourage people to go and see more foreign films. Especially this one because I love it so much. So I'm going to really take the time to do that job properly because it's a lot of work and then I'm going to do all the tour for Sahara which comes out April 8th. I also want to do that and enjoy it. It's hard work and when you're combining it with something else it gets too crazy. So I want to do one thing at a time.”
Cruz has received some unwanted publicity recently for socializing with Sahara costar Matthew McConaughey off the set. With her experience in public relationships, Cruz simply disregards all the hype. “I just live my life without mixing my personal life with the work. And I never talk about my personal life and I feel that it's my right to save that for myself. It's my responsibility to do that because it's always a trap. You'll have someone in front of you that looks so nice, that you feel you can tell your secrets to and in the end it's not natural to share your things with someone like you. No. I did that when was I a teenager and then I'd get so upset because I'd talk about a movie for two hours and then all I read about was something personal that I talked about. So you learn that lesson and then you don't do it anymore.”
With that philosophy, Cruz lives her life freely, unhassled by paparazzi. “I've never had this problem or anything I can remember like that. I just don't like it when they follow my family or when they photograph my family. This is my job, but my sister is now an actress and a dancer. My brother is a musician and he's going to record his album, but he doesn't want to do press until the album comes out. I think he's very smart about that. So I always like having respect from the press for my family and not taking pictures of my parents. I'm used to having four cars behind me. I think about it as having more security for free. I'm never alone.”
Almadovar is deciding between a comedy and a drama script, but in each one, Cruz would be playing a mother. While most young actresses fear the day they get cast as mothers, Cruz embraces is. “I think that's crazy because I could have a 15-year-old son. No. I could. Physically, I could, honestly. And I love playing a mother. I want to have babies myself. I don't know when. I don't feel it at the moment, but for sure I want to be a mother. It's a great thing.”
Don’t Move is now playing. Sahara opens April 8. |
