Venice Film Festival: Penelope Cruz received the Best Actress award

“Thanks Pedro, you have created a magic, I adore you”, said the actress upon receiving the award and dedicating it to her family.

Known as ‘Almodóvar girl’, the 47-year-old actress, considered one of the most prominent of her generation both in Spain and in the world, convinced the jury chaired by Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-ho for her role as Janis, a woman that she becomes pregnant by a married archaeologist, who promises to help her find the place where her great-grandfather, who disappeared at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War, is buried.

Born in 1974 into a modest family on the outskirts of Madrid, she assures that she learned the trade by observing the captivating behaviors of the clients of her mother’s hairdresser.

Penelope Cruz and her husband Javier Bardem form the flagship couple of Iberian cinema and they both like to remember that they owe everything to the late Spanish director Bigas Luna, who in 1991 brought them together for the first time for the film “Jamón, Jamón”.

They are the first Spanish actors to have won an Oscar: Bardem in 2008 for his role as a murderer in “No country for old men” by the Coen brothers and she in 2009, for “Vicky Cristina Barcelona” by Woody Allen.