The career of Penelope Cruz and her arrival in Hollywood was not easy. The Spanish actress, who for several years has worked assiduously in both Europe and the United States, revealed a bitter experience she had to go through when trying to set foot in American cinema. The protagonist of Everything about my mother revealed how they tried to force her to film nudes in a script that, a priori, had no scheduled scenes of that type.
When she was 21 years old, she gets the chance to join a project in Hollywood for a script she considered "fabulous". After studying English for four months with the aim of managing the language and provide a dignified casting test, the Madrid native set out to travel to Hollywood to fulfill her goal: "When she arrived there, still with jet lag, they told me: We have to see you In our offices, they wanted to add something to my contract, then they tell me: If you want to do the test, you must accept that there will be some nude scenes that are not included in the script.
Totally furious in the face of that obvious manipulation, Cruz exploded: "I told them: Why did not they tell me 24 hours before I got on the plane?" Even though I had already made films with nudity at that moment, I did not want to spend For the same reason, I felt that, at least for a couple of years, I was going to deny what I felt my heart telling me not to. "
The actress said that although she refused to take an eventual nude because it was not what had been scheduled, she wanted to do the test: "The director (whom he refused to name) stopped talking to me and left the room, he was furious. I called the heads of the study, I did not speak English at that time, but at that meeting I started doing it, I told them: If you think you can treat people like that, it will not work for me, I have a family that loves me, So I'm going to get on the plane again, and I do not care if I do not make your film, but you know what, what I'm going to do is test it, and they looked at me like I was insane. "
For the actress, that moment was a turning point in her career: "I can now say, at 44, that this was one of the moments I felt most proud of myself." At that point I felt that the day in which he died, he would remember that instance (.) I remember that the feeling was very special for me, it made me stronger, and I think that from that, there were a lot of yeses that came to my life.
