Penélope

“It’s the influence of the women in my life,” she says, when I ask her why she feels so drawn to these mysterious, multi-layered characters; disparate but unified in their sense of not trying too hard to be liked. “My grandmothers, my mother, they didn’t have time to worry about what others were thinking about them. I want to honor the women I knew.”

As well as paying her respects to family, Cruz also wants to hallow the universal female experience. “The scene where Pína talks about perimenopause was not in the script. I wanted to bring that to her. We were sitting around the table for 10 hours a day, the four of us actors with the two writers [Will McCormack and Rashida Jones]. It was a really intense, beautiful time. I proposed that speech because I felt like, if we really want her to be a good therapist and sexologist, she’s going to understand about female hormones, the effect on the brain. I said: ‘If she is going to talk about sex, she has to talk about this.’”

Visually, it’s a standout moment, with Pína comparing women’s menopausal ovaries to “empty ballsacks flapping around in the breeze,” as she toys appallingly with two olives from a charcuterie board – a gesture that Cruz tells me she improvised. “Seth knew the line was coming, but he didn’t know what I was going to do with the olives.” Her smile widens. “It was really so funny to see his face.”

The levity is masterful, but it’s a topic Cruz is serious about. “It’s shocking that over decades, we’ve stuck to the same information about how women’s bodies work,” she says, switching from vim to vigor. “Look at funding for investigation into any illness that affects only women – we don’t get even half the investment. It is a level of control or suppression.” I wonder about recent reports of a brain aneurysm while she was filming her other 2026 release, La Bola Negra. “I have had many scares like that. Fortunately, I’m fine, it was a false alarm,” she shrugs, “but I worry about staying healthy, taking care of myself. I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, I really don’t party. Without health, we have nothing. You talk about real equality? Why don’t we start with health?”

Emphatic as she is, woven through these concerns there is also a supreme gratitude for the rewards of age and experience. “In my twenties, people were already asking me if I was afraid of getting older,” she says, shaking her head. “I got asked that question so many times. My way to battle it then was just not answering. I was not going to give weight or importance to that question.” Now at 52, her stance has shifted, as – conversely to what so many women before her have reported – roles seem to have burgeoned in tandem with the convolution of her life: “The level of diversity in the women that I have been offered to play has maintained, maybe gotten even greater.” A recognition, perhaps, of the increasing depth she brings to the table.

She touches on a subject that both she and husband Javier Bardem have been publicly vociferous about. “It is important to name it,” she says. “It is so difficult to be a teenager right now; what the boys are being fed, what they are being tricked into thinking.” Like many of us, her issue isn’t necessarily with technology, but with the forces snaking through it. “It is a type of manipulation that confuses even adults,” she says. “With teenagers or children, it is a very dangerous weapon.”

“As parents, you have to work much harder to create the right atmosphere at home.” She describes the small rituals she and Bardem try to preserve: using a pen and paper, spending time in nature, creating stillness and space for conversation. “My parents had me so young that I grew up being able to talk to them about everything,” she says. “I want the same thing in my relationship with my kids. To create a safe environment where they feel that they can ask all the questions and share whatever they need to. And I will listen without judgement.” A sagacity most of us can only aspire to.

That craving for familial closeness sees Cruz knit life tightly round all of her loved ones. Both her mother Encarna and sister Mónica live within minutes of her in Madrid, the three of them dipping in and out of each other’s homes with alacrity. “My sister and I share a love of fashion. We still exchange things. I love going in her closet. She’s very generous but she tells me: ‘Don’t leave things a mess if you touch the bikinis!’” A sweet image. Drifting further into style for a second, I bring up the wardrobe on our shoot and whether she leans more towards the sultriness of Dolce&Gabbana lace or the self-possession of Loewe tailoring. Cruz laughs: “I could be both of those girls.”

Of course she could. Cruz built the foundations of her extraordinary career on her grasp of human contradiction. It seems to me, though, that for all the years she spent observing everyone else, the actor’s richest body of research is now mined from her own cavernous world; in her own elation, sorrow and hard-won perspective. From the women who reared her to the way she is now raising children herself, she has become her own source material. After all, nobody is just one thing, least of all Penélope Cruz.

The Invite is in cinemas now

Shop The Cover Shoot

The Best Indie Movies To Watch In 2026

A Star Is Born, with Sarah Pidgeon