Credit: Far Out / New Line Cinema
From making her big-screen debut as a teenager to becoming the first Spanish woman in history to win an acting Oscar, Penélope Cruz has come a long way, showing equal comfort being in a multi-million dollar blockbuster as in an auteur-led indie project.
She has established herself as one of the most reliable superstars of her era, and while it hasn’t always been perfect (lest we forget, she was in Sex and the City 2), most of the time, she’s absolutely smashed it.
Across her remarkable rise to the top, Cruz has worked with just about every famous woman in Hollywood, where Vicki Cristina Barcelona, the movie that landed her an Academy Award, brought her into the orbits of both Rebecca Hall and Scarlet Johansson. Recently, she co-starred with Jessie Buckley and Anette Bening in The Bride!, which was directed by another prominent actress, Maggie Gyllenhaal, while Halle Berry has spoken publicly about how much she enjoyed working with Cruz on the 2003 horror, Gothika.
Speaking with Interview, Cruz named some of her favourite female actors of all time, revealing a fondness for Debra Winger and Anna Magnani, but admitted that there was “nobody better” than Meryl Streep, around whom, over the years, she’s found herself feeling incredibly comfortable, perhaps a little too comfortable.
“I watch her movies over and over again,” she confessed, “I saw Silkwood again a couple of weeks ago, and it made me just want to kiss her feet. We only know each other from seeing each other at awards ceremonies or those kinds of events, but whenever I see her, I always go up to her and start kissing her. I don’t even say anything, I just kiss her. She must think I’m some crazy person.”
Silkwood is a 1983 drama from the great Mike Nichols and one of the many, many films for which Streep was nominated for an Oscar, where she plays the titular character, Karen Silkwood, a labour unionist investigating allegations of dangerous working conditions at a nuclear power plant.
The movie hinges on the fatal car crash that Silkwood suffered while on her way to meet a journalist from The New York Times and the conspiracy theory that she was killed to keep her silent. Streep has called the character one of her all-time favourites, claiming she felt an affinity for Karen’s tenacity and bravery.
At the time of writing, Cruz and Streep still haven’t starred in a movie together, with the closest they’ve come being a photoshoot for French Vogue. One of the three covers produced to raise awareness for an Aids charity features a topless Cruz sitting on Streep’s lap, with the Spaniard telling The Hollywood Reporter that it was the “most interesting love scene I ever did”.
There’s still plenty of time for these two great performers to work together on a serious project, but if Cruz keeps up the relentless pursuit of her idol, she might find herself being served a restraining order instead of a script.
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