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Nov. 21--Penelope Cruz was back in a supporting role last month as Bono and Oprah gallivanted around North Michigan Avenue pitching the Product Red campaign to get much-needed drugs to Africa.
She was already inside the Gap when the rocker and talk-show queen arrived to do some shopping and "Oprah" taping, and once the superstar duo had taken off and crowds outside had disappeared, she was whisked to the makeshift Motorola store a few blocks north.
Even when she finally emerged from there with Bono, hip-hop star Kanye West and model Christy Turlington, she was all too happy to let the U2 frontman hold court while she did some more soft-spoken promoting of the cause in the background.
That's pretty much how it has been for the 32-year-old Spanish actress in the U.S. She appears alongside high-profile folks onscreen and off, but she never seems to pop on her own.
So people whose impressions of Cruz are limited to gossip columns (she's had some famous boyfriends) and mainstream movies such as "Sahara" and "Vanilla Sky" may be surprised to see how she dominates the screen in Pedro Almodovar's "Volver," a Spanish-language drama that opens Wednesday. As Raimunda, a relatively young mother who goes to great lengths to protect her teenage daughter while haunted by her own departed mom, Cruz is a life force in a way never seen in her English-language roles.
Cruz, who previously acted in Almodovar's "Live Flesh" and "All About My Mother," said she knew from the start that her "Volver" role would be something special.
"I read it, and it was too good to be true," Cruz, petite and delicately striking in person, said the evening before her Product Red promotion. "My favorite director is putting this character in my hand. It was really a perfect experience, a complete experience in every way."
Well before she hit these shores, Cruz had become a star in Spain through her ripe, sensual performances in "Jamon, Jamon" and "Belle Epoque" (both 1992).
She also had the 1997 hits "Live Flesh" and "Abre Los Ojos" ("Open Your Eyes," the basis of "Vanilla Sky") on her resume by the time she took her first Hollywood role, in Stephen Frears' western "The Hi-Lo Country" (1998).
"When I came here, I remember my first year -- all the meetings with all the actors and all the directors in the read-throughs -- and I didn't understand what was going on because my level of English was very poor," she recalled. "I started to learn English when I was 18."
Yet Cruz, with her exotic looks and liquid brown eyes, continued to be cast as entrancing women of various nationalities -- Mexican in "All the Pretty Horses," Brazilian in "Woman on Top," Greek in "Captain Corelli's Mandolin" -- opposite American leading men. In such roles she was like the actress equivalent of world music: pleasing, suggestive of faraway lands, indistinct.
She was far more indelible as a pregnant, AIDS-stricken nun in "All About My Mother" (1999), and now with "Volver" she's receiving the best reviews of her career, generating significant Oscar talk in a year that, for once, doesn't lack for standout lead female performances.
"For those who know Cruz only from her anemic appearances in English-language movies, her passionate, earthy performance here as a fiercely protective but vulnerable mother will come as a revelation," David Ansen writes in a typical review in Newsweek.
Why is this performance different from all other performances? Cruz cited several factors: "the right director, the right material, a character that is demanding. Difficult characters always make it easier for an actor to create something interesting, even if that sounds contradictory."
She said Almodovar mentioned the movie to her six years ago, suggesting she could play the daughter. A year and a half ago, he was revising his plan and pitching her the mother's role instead. Some actresses might bristle at being cast as the older woman but not Cruz.
"I was praying, 'Please, please, I want to play the mother. I'm ready to play a woman,'" she said.
Reading the script just confirmed her impulse. "I felt it was a legendary character," she said. "I felt it was a homage to women, to women's strength and vulnerability and solidarity, even humor. There was everything in her."
Almodovar is known for lavishing much love on his female characters, even the nutty ones, and his deep sympathy is on full display in "Volver." He rehearsed his cast for three months, an unusually long period, so that by the time shooting began, Cruz and her co-stars (including long-ago Almodovar regular Carmen Maura as Raimunda's mother) had their characters in their bones.
Cruz also had a little extra padding on the backside thanks to Almodovar's decision to add some heft to Raimunda.
"He wanted this look of these women from Italian neorealists that are a very clear representation of motherhood," Cruz said. "He wanted the body of a woman that gave birth when she was 14, so that was the reason. And also he told me, 'Eat whatever you want. Don't lose any weight.' And I did." She laughed.
All of that preparation -- and the fact that she was under the direction of a close friend -- didn't reduce her anxiety when the cameras finally began to roll.
Almodovar shoots very few takes per scene, Cruz said, and he likes to keep the camera rolling as characters go through one emotional transition atop another, with no cuts. "That's a great challenge, and I like that fear," she said. "But it was very scary."
Now Cruz wants to take a break from her multiple-films-a-year schedule.
She owns a Madrid clothing store, designs jewelry and bags for a Japanese company and is considering starting a European clothing line with her sister. "Also, it wouldn't be bad to have a little bit of time for myself," she said.
mcaro@tribune.com
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Copyright (c) 2006, Chicago Tribune
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