Earlier this year, Cruz became the first Spanish-born actress to win an Oscar when she was named best supporting actress for her role in Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona. This fall, she'll star in two new films, Broken Embraces, her fourth film with director Pedro Almodóvar, and Rob Marshall's musical Nine, but Vanity Fair takes a look back at her career and reveals that if several directors hadn't realized her potential, she may have never found success in Hollywood.

There are only a handful of actresses who have started their careers in a non-English speaking country and gone on to become A-list actresses, such as Marlene Dietrich, Sophia Loren, and Ingrid Bergman, but Sischy writes:

Like some of those actresses, Cruz isn't cookie-cutter pretty-she even has a bit of a schnoz-but her unusual features come together in a memorable aria of real beauty.

We really can't see any imperfections in Cruz, and Woody Allen seems to agree, saying:

"I don't like to look at Penélope directly. It is too overwhelming."

Almodóvar says the reason Cruz's career got off to a rocky start with films like Vanilla Sky, Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Gothika, and other films that were not considered commercial successes is that other people in Hollywood couldn't see past her beauty:

"It was bad luck for Penélope, because some of the movies were very ambitious, but this happens. They only saw her as a beautiful girl. It is the problem with the market, the agents, the studios, the film industry as a whole that labels actors in a way that is not very subtle at all. The problem is that it happened with 10 or 12 movies for Penélope, and it could have been the end." Then he laughed: "But I was there to save her. I'm joking now."

Penélope, who grew up outside of Madrid, was inspired to become an actress by watching Almodóvar's films as a teenager. Seeing his film Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! changed her life. She explains:

"That was the day I decided to be an actress," Cruz says. "I fell in love. I'd found what I wanted to do. I really didn't want to have to be in an office. I was a good student, but not happy. I thought, I have nobody in my family and no friends who can make a living out of anything related to an artistic profession, but I want to try. I decided to look for an agent."

Later, after she'd acted in a string of somewhat successful American films and become known as a celebrity, but not a great actress, Almodóvar's 2006 film Volver relaunched her career.

Penélope was born to be an actress," says Almodóvar... "She is someone who is extremely emotional, and if she was not an actress it could be a problem for her. It's luck she has chosen a profession that allows her to express something that would be too much for a normal person. Otherwise she would suffer a lot. And even now maybe she suffers too much." Apparently this tendency goes way back. "I've always been a worrier," says Cruz. "Since I was a little girl I've always felt that if I had a moment of peace I'd wonder: Are you sure you can afford to feel like this?"

Of course, she still refuses to discuss her emotions concerning one area of her life: her relationship with Javier Bardem. She refuses to discuss the persistant rumors that the two are expecting a child. Sischy seems to see it as a triumph that she gets Cruz to let this one little detail slip, writing;

I brought up a U2 concert that she and Bardem had attended in Paris, mentioning that I'd heard she was playing air guitar during some of the songs. She squealed with delight, saying, "Javier is even better at air guitar!"

The Passions Of Penelope [Vanity Fair]
OMG! Penelope Cruz Feeds Pregnancy Reports; Visits The Ob-Gyn Clinic [N.Y. Daily News]

Not letting any grass grow under their feet, less than a day after her death, the Telegraph has reduced Natasha Richardson's death to part of a "family curse" that haunts her prominent clan. This is it: "A series of marriage failures and controversies have beset the family, including Richardson's divorce from her first husband and the revelation that both her father and grandfather were bisexual." And, oh yeah, Liam Neeson once "cheated death" in a motorcycle crash. In other words, she comes from a family. Which is in the public eye.

Beyond the general ghoulish poor taste of casting Richardson's death in such a light — can't we just mourn her on her own terms? — it does seem inaccurate; surely any "curse" worth its salt needs to include at least three tragic and premature deaths and a series of inexplicable happenings. What the Telegraph is describing is no more and no less than the natural ebb and flow of a large, strong-willed family in the public eye — and by those standards, is pretty tame.

However, the very suggestion is an irony of its own. If there is a "curse" to families like these, it's probably the public — and media's — unwillingness to separate one part from the whole. Richardson said that she moved to the States to escape the pressures and expectations of family, and as Obit magazine points out in a thoughtful essay, she succeeded in defining herself independently.

The fact that she made a place for herself in a world that had been dominated by her parents, actress Vanessa Redgrave and director Tony Richardson, her grandfather Michael Redgrave and her aunt Lynn Redgrave was only her most visible achievement. She arrived professionally in a post-modern retrospective age - one in which all the great stories were thought to have been told - that was also rife with celebrity deification.

Richardson did something very difficult: forged her own distinct career and identity and by all accounts lived a life well and happily, no mean achievement. Her death is sad not because she's a Redgrave, but because she was a talented performer in her prime who leaves behind two young sons and a grieving family. For the Telegraph to strip her death not only of its unique sadness, but her life of its hard-won independence, seems unfair. But the lure of a "dynasty" is too potent for the media to ignore. And that, at the end of the day, is a real Curse of the Redgraves.

Natasha Richardson's death adds to speculation of 'curse' on Redgrave dynasty [Telegraph]
Improvising Her Best Role [Obit]

Kenny goes on to document the post-porn careers of women such as Linda Lovelace, Marilyn Chambers, and maybe most well-known, Traci Lords. It's interesting that she found success by bad-mouthing the porn industry (which she got into when she was underaged) and by appearing in "mainstream" flicks — helmed by decidedly left-of-center director John Waters. (Lords also appeared in workout videos that were highly sexualized.)

But why is it so hard for porn stars to become "mainstream" movie stars? It's not like a singer trying to be an actor or a actor attempting to have a music career. Is it because we assume the acting is bad? So are the performances on tons of soap operas. Yet soap stars break out into flicks all the time. Is it the (shh!) ess-ee-ex? Do we lose respect for a woman who's been paid to fake (or have!) an orgasm on film? Why her and not Meg Ryan? We don't expect our actresses to be virginal Doris Day clones. Angelina Jolie, Helen Mirren and Judi Dench have been topless on film. But do we have some sort of ingrained puritanical values in our collective psyche that prevents us from respecting porn stars? That keeps us from accepting them as hard-working actors?

From Porn To Mainstream: Can Jenna Pull It Off? [Premiere]
Related: YOUTUBULAR: Traci Lords' Shameful Post-Porn Career [Best Week Ever]

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