Penelope Cruz has a fear of driving after witnessing her younger sister get run over when they were children.
Penelope Cruz is terrified of driving after witnessing her sister get run over.
The 'Ferrari' actress experienced a "great trauma" when she was just nine years old after her younger sibling Mónica Cruz was hit by a car and lost consciousness, resulting in the 49-year-old star developing a reluctance to ever get behind the wheel.
She told America's Elle magazine: "I have a fear of driving. My sister was run over by a car in front of me when I was eight or nine. I remember she was wearing a red coat.
"And for me, time stopped. It’s a great trauma, because I saw her losing consciousness. And I was numb in the hospital, telling people, ‘Oh, my sister just got run over by a car.’”
Monica, now 46, made a full recovery, but Penelope suspects she "would have been hysterical" if she witnessed such a severe accident in adulthood.
The 'Vanilla Sky' actress - who has Leo, 12, and 10-year-old Luna with husband Javier Bardem - revealed she has therapy to find a "balance" to deal with the level of empathy she feels.
Explaining she experiences a "back-and-forth dance between fiction and reality" which "plays into a certain stereotype" of actors, she added: “I’m lucky to have it, but maybe it makes me feel or suffer things more.
"I can feel it; it’s like a hypersensitivity in every way - visually, to sound, to people’s feelings.
"It’s been one of the main things I deal with in therapy: how to work a balance so I can keep feeling those things without making those feelings my own.”
But while Penelope finds some of her roles "uncomfortable and painful" as a result, she thinks they always make her a better person by the end of a shoot.
She said: "Sometimes [the characters I play] can be uncomfortable and painful. It’s hard to let them go, but at the end, I always feel they made me a little bit more compassionate than I was two months ago.
"And with the safety net that you know this is not your reality. It creates less judging and more compassion in every area of my life.”
On the same day that Glastonbury welcomed back Margate's adopted sons, The Libertines, Margate itself put on it's very own Leisure Festival as it...
Oasis fans hoping to get tickets for the band's reunion shows are being asked a trivia question to secure access to a pre-sale ballot.
Sheffield's very own all girl group Pretty Fierce are still on a high after the recent release of their debut single - 'Ready For Me'.
Three nights before the end of his current tour Will Varley returned to his home town of Deal to delight a sold out crowd in The Astor Theatre.
With only a few days to go before Portsmouth based songstress and producer WYSE releases her new single, 'Belladonna', we caught up with her to find...
Colorado raised, Glasgow educated and Manchester based Bay Bryan is nothing if not a multi-talented, multi-faceted artist performing as both...
Former Marigolds band member Keelan Cunningham has rediscovered his love of music with his new solo project Keelan X.
Wiltshire singer-songwriter Luke De Sciscio, formally known as Folk Boy, is set to release is latest album - 'The Banquet' via AntiFragile Music on...
The latest adaptation of Agatha Christie's 83-year-old classic whodunit, this lavish, star-studded film is old-style...
It's the 1930s and a group of strangers from different walks of life board a...
From Spain, this drama grapples with some enormous issues without getting too heavy about them....
Although it contains some memorably outrageous comedy moments, this movie (retitled The Brothers Grimsby for...
With virtually the same blend of wit and idiocy as the 2001 original, this fashion-scene...
Though Derek and Hansel have left the world of fashion modelling behind them, a part...
Nobby is a good ol' northern lad who loves nothing more than spending time with...
Derek, Hansel and some other familiar faces are back in Zoolander 2! After offering their...
Nobby and Sebastian are long lost brothers who live completely different lives. Sebastian is a...
After a disastrous return to the fashion industry following his retirement, which almost ended in...
When Gemma was a young student from Italy, all she wanted was excitement and adventure...
This film proves that all the right ingredients don't necessarily make a movie work. Even...
'The Counsellor' tells the story of a naive lawyer who holds the belief that dabbling...
Fans of more recent Almodovar films like The Skin I Live In or Volver should...