las bombones de la madre patria

Paz Vega
Got her surname Vega from her grandmother.

Majored in journalism, but dropped out of college after two years to pursue an acting career.

After two years at the acting school, she moved to Madrid, where she worked in bars while auditioning for every gig she heard about.

Was a television star before making it in movies.

Husband is Venezuelan. They met while vacationing on a Spanish island.

Her stage name translated into English means 'peace meadow'.

"I don't want to play only Latin women. I want to have roles in English."

"I am only an actress when they say, 'action' and I stop being an actress when they say, 'cut'. I am a normal person outside of acting."

Penelope Cruz
Penélope Cruz Sanchez was born on April 28, 1974 in Madrid (Spain). She is 5'6" (1.68 meters). She did nit finish her secondary Studies. She studies 10 years of classical ballet, 3 years of Spanish ballet and 4 years of theater (Cristina Rota's School and in New York). She was one of three children of a merchant and a hairdresser and she was named due to the inspiration of a Joan Manuel Serrat song.


Penelope has a brother named Eduardo and sister named Mónica. She broke into acting in 1992. That year, she had starring roles in Jamón Jamón and Belle Epoque, two very disparate films. The former cast her as the desperately poor daughter of a village prostitute, while the latter featured her as one of four lusty daughters of a wealthy man in pre-Franco Spain. Belle Epoque proved to be a huge success, winning nine Goya Awards (the Spanish equivalent of an Academy Award) and an Oscar for Best Foreign Film. Its success gave Cruz a dose of international recognition, and after starring in a number of Spanish films, she enhanced this recognition in 1997 with the Sundance entry Abre los Ojos. That same year, she had a brief but memorable role in Pedro Almodóvar's Carne Trémula. In 1998, Cruz had her first starring role in an English language film, playing Billy Crudup's Mexican-American love interest in Stephen Frears' The Hi-Lo Country. She had another go at English later that year in the Spanish-British romantic comedy Twice Upon a Yesterday, which cast her as a Spanish barmaid living in London. In 1999, she returned to Spain to collaborate once again with Almodóvar on Todo Sobre Mi Madre, a wildly acclaimed film that premiered at Cannes that year.