Penelope talks about life with Tom
NEW YORK – Penelope Cruz wants to make one thing very clear.
She NEVER talks about her relationship with Tom Cruise in interviews.
So, of course, we asked her right off how the romance with America’s biggest movie star was working out.
“Everything is fine,” Cruz – who stars in the new movie “Don’t Tempt Me” – replied pleasantly.
She went on to reveal that there are no marriage plans in their immediate future.
“I never grew up dreaming about a wedding – I don’t think about things like that,” she said when asked about becoming the future Mrs. Cruise. “I don’t know how to explain it. All I care about is to be happy.”
The 29-year-old actress made magazine covers two years ago when Cruise left his wife of nine years, Nicole Kidman, and their two adopted children and took up with Cruz, his co-star in 2001’s “Vanilla Sky.”
Kidman, who met Cruise on the set of 1990’s “Days of Thunder,” had initially taken heat for what some saw as an attempt to bolster an Australia-based career by dating a film superstar.
Of course, she proved she could hold her own in movies like “To Die For” and “Moulin Rouge,” going on to win an Oscar this year for her role in “The Hours.”
Now Cruz faces the same type of criticism. Though she’s been acting in her native Spain since she was 17 and has made 30 movies there, her movie choices since she hooked up with Cruise (the couple live together in L.A., and she has a house outside Madrid) are being scrutinized, and most people know her from her personal life.
But she says she’s learned from her boyfriend, especially his career.
“I might be too close to it to talk about Tom’s career, because he’s who I live with, but I really admire his integrity in every way,” she says. “It’s reflected in his career, and that’s exactly how he is like in life. He’s really a very special person, and it comes from his heart.”
It’s too early to tell if Cruise’s astute instincts will rub off on the Spanish beauty.
Since Cruz’s personal life became gossip-page fodder, her films have been forgettable (“Captain Corelli’s Mandolin”), derided (“Vanilla Sky”) or minor (“Masked and Anonymous”).
In “Don’t Tempt Me,” Cruz returned to Spain to play a male gangster placed in a woman’s body and sent to Hell. She then teams with an angel from Heaven (Victoria Abril) for a mysterious mission on Earth.
“I’m not afraid of difficult things,” says Cruz. “I could have done the good angel part, but this one was more (fun). I look for complex characters.”
Her upcoming projects attest to that: In this fall’s thriller “Gothika,” Cruz plays an inmate in a mental hospital, opposite Halle Berry. Then she’ll play a lesbian involved with Charlize Theron in the period drama “Head in the Clouds,” and a troubled incest victim in “Don’t Move.”
“I don’t think it’s harder to find (good) roles in Hollywood” than in Spain, Cruz says. “It’s hard in general.
“But if you’re not afraid of things, that helps.”
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