Cruz takes control

If you hadn't already noticed, there is more to Penelope Cruz than meets the eye. Not that what does meet the eye isn't spectacular. With her enormous, limpid dark eyes, lithe dancer's body, prominent nose and freckle-splashed olive complexion, she is not only blessed with breath-taking beauty but also with character.

Time magazine once remarked that she looks like 'The love child of Sophia Loren and Ringo Starr.' Penelope Cruz was born 30 years ago on the outskirts of Madrid. Her mother was a beautician, her father worked in the retail trade. 'I wasn't born rich, and I'm glad,' she says. 'My parents had such a great work ethic, and I'm happy that I saw what real life is about every day.'

She trained as a ballerina from the age of four and once harboured ambitions to be a professional dancer. At 16 she saw Pedro Almodovar's film, Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! and decided she wanted to be an actress instead. Two years later she caused a sensation in her screen debut as the daughter of a small town hooker in Almodovar's 1992 film Jamón, Jamón, justifying the furore with her jaw-dropping performance as a pregnant, HIV positive, heroin-addicted nun in Almodovar's All About My Mother seven years later. She is now set for another stint with Almodovar (her fourth), in the upcoming comedy, Volver. If her roles in such mainstream movies as Vanilla Sky and Captain Corelli's Mandolin have not always allowed Cruz's talent and vivacity to shine - and if she is still more readily identified outside Spain as Tom Cruise's ex-girlfriend - a glance at her European movies reveals a fine and spirited actress. In fact, despite being the only European actress to have made it on to Hollywood's A list, Cruz manages to straddle popcorn blockbusters and edgy, art-house indies with ease.

As if to prove the point, this month she stars in the Italian drama, Don't Move, in which she plays a dowdy, downtrodded peasant woman who falls in love with the aristocratic man who rapes her. It's a performance that has already earned her a David di Donatello Award (the Italian equivalent of an Oscar). In Don't Move, Cruz is all but unrecognizable behind crapulous false teeth, scary hair and grisly make-up.

'I wanted this part because it was something completely new,' Cruz says. 'I'm never afraid of playing parts like that. It's the kind of material I look for. This is a woman who has nothing. She has no self-esteem and thinks she deserves nothing in life. She broke my heart. I've met people like that and I wanted to give her dignity.' She gives short shrift to the suggestion that, after Charlize Theron's Oscar-winning turn in Monster, playing ugly is a guaranteed ticket to Awardsville. 'If the character didn't have the emotional substance,' she says, 'It wouldn't matter that I look ugly. You cannot fool the audience. And I would never try to get extra credit just for not being afraid to be ugly. I loved this woman and felt a lot of compassion for her. It was a risk, but I like to take risks.'

Apart from the dramatic change in appearance - Cruz stopped shaving her legs for the role and would walk the streets of Rome in costume to get a taste of how it feels to be stared at for exactly the opposite reasons than usual - the biggest risk Don't Move poses for Cruz, particularly where her American audience is concerned, is the film's premise that a woman could fall for her rapist. 'People always talk about that before they see the movie,' she says, sharply. 'I would never do a movie that justified rape, that would be a terrible thing. But the movie is not about that. It's about two people who are damaged. It just shows things the way they are.'

Still, for those of her fans who haven't the stomach for such intense fare, Cruz has another movie out soon that is anything but a piece of reality - the Indiana Jones-style action-adventure Sahara, in which she stars opposite her current beau Matthew McConaughey.

Cruz remains tight-lipped on the subject of McConaughey and of Cruise she will only say, 'He's forever my friend.' Was she wary of getting into another high-profile romance? 'I don't want to talk about Matthew,' she says, sternly. 'It's something I have to protect. But [Sahara] was so much fun,' she adds, brightly. 'I felt like an action hero when I was doing it.

I got to gallop on a camel very, very fast next to a train.'

Alongside her roles as expert camel-galloper, ravishing beauty, classical dancer, action star and award-winning dramatic actress, Cruz also models for Ralph Lauren, speaks four languages fluently and is a gifted photographer, whose exhibition of photos of Tibetan refugees in Nepal was opened by the Dalai Lama.

A few years ago, Cruz was invited to photograph Mother Theresa and her work on the streets of Calcutta. 'That changed my life,' she says. 'I saw things that I had only seen on the news, children thrown in the street, crazy things. It makes me so angry. It's one of the reasons I want to adopt a child. I tried to do it then but I couldn't because I wasn't married. I want to give a child a future.

I did think, "How can I go back to make movies after this?" I spoke to Mother Theresa about that. She said it would be a mistake not to take the opportunities life has given me and use them for good causes.'

Although she refuses to go into detail, Cruz regularly donates large portions of her movie fees to charity. In November last year, en route to the set of her next movie, Bandidas, in Durango, New Mexico, Cruz, accompanied by her co-star and bosom buddy Salma Hayek, had cause to take stock of the opportunities life has given her and what use she has put them to.