Penélope Cruz enters the Michael Mann biopic “Ferrari” with a scene that manages to be funny, shocking, revealing and — hear me out — operatic.
Also: She didn’t want to do it.
At least, she tells me she didn’t want to do it the way it was written. Playing Laura Ferrari, the wife and business partner of motor racing mogul Enzo Ferrari, Cruz was called on to unleash her character’s pent-up rage by firing a gun at a wall behind Enzo when he arrives home after spending the night, presumably, in the arms of another woman. (It turns out, Laura doesn’t even know the half of it.)
The scene terrified Cruz, and she asked director Mann if she could do it without firing the gun because she didn’t think she could pull off the combination of heightened melodrama and comedy. Mann’s response: “That’s not going to happen. We’re only going to do this version because it will work.”
And it does. When “Ferrari” premiered at the Venice Film Festival in late August, the audience laughed — partly from shock, partly from appreciation of the way Cruz nailed the scene. Her fierce portrayal of Laura, a woman consumed by grief over the death of her son and stewing with resentment over the dismissive way her husband and others treat her, is one of the highlights of the film, which opens in theaters Christmas Day. It wouldn’t be surprising to see Cruz, an Oscar winner and four-time nominee, most recently for the 2021 Pedro Almodóvar film “Parallel Mothers,” at the Academy Awards again.
The director and stars Adam Driver and Penélope Cruz discuss the making of the Italian-shot biopic that revs this year’s Oscar season into the red.
Calling over Zoom from the home in Madrid she shares with her husband, actor Javier Bardem, and two children, Cruz is eager to talk about the film, though our conversation keeps digressing in ways both delightful and altogether unexpected. Sometime since we last spoke, for instance, Cruz has taken a passionate interest in reading books about medicine. She calls it her “No 1 hobby.” She’s particularly taken with the endocrine system — don’t get her started on glands — and her Kindle is filled with volumes on health and wellness.
She isn’t sure how this happened.
“Hypochondriac?” she says, laughing. “Maybe.”
But she has thought about it. When Cruz was a little girl, 3, 4 years old, she’d play with friends in Madrid, always taking one of two roles — mother or doctor. And even at that young age, she was aware that she was acting, exploring other people’s realities, how they were thinking and feeling and reacting. Here she was, not even in grade school, inhabiting other characters, taking her maternal instincts for a spin. Then, when she was 11, her baby brother, Eduardo, was born. Cruz no longer had to pretend to change diapers. And not surprisingly, the reality of it didn’t bother her (much).
Eduardo lives in Los Angeles, and although Cruz’s own children are just 10 and 12, she feels like she’s already gone through the empty nest process of letting a loved one she cared for go. Otherwise, everyone else in her family lives about five minutes from her home. She says she doesn’t go out at all — “I’m on a morning schedule with my kids” — but she was never one for the nightlife even when she was younger.
The film is her seventh with director Pedro Almodovar, who raised the idea of the motherhood drama with her 20 years ago
“I was trying to make a living out of acting, hanging out with older people,” Cruz says, talking about a work ethic that began as a young girl learning classical ballet at the Madrid Royal Conservatory. “Studying and training always made me happier.”
“I had a few years in my 20s and early 30s where my rhythm was crazy,” she continues. “It was flying back and forth nonstop, working in the middle of the night, waking up to answer emails, a total workaholic to the point where I was getting sick because there was no sleep. It was too much — for my mind especially. The level of stress was crazy. And then your body tells you, in a sneaky way when you least expect it, ‘Stop. Stop.’ By the time your body tells you that, you have a big price to pay from that burnout. That’s how it was, always making three, four movies a year. But maybe that gave me the opportunity to work this other rhythm, like once per year.”
This year’s movie is, as mentioned, “Ferrari,” playing a part that Mann calls the “ferocious heart” of the film. He also tells me that Cruz was “formed by nature to do this role.” Yes, he’s rather taken with her.
“She understands this character in a way ... she’s lived with this character her whole life,” says Mann, who has known Cruz since around 2006. “She’s a woman who holds strong opinions about things and doesn’t show up with a vanity or conceit. She has a very healthy artistic ego. It’s all about getting the moment, getting the work done.”
Enzo Ferrari launched his motor company with Laura in postwar Italy and in “Ferrari,” we see that its fortunes, such as they are in 1957, are tied to its success at the racetrack. Enzo (played by Adam Driver) needs an investor to keep the company afloat and, to accomplish this, he needs Laura to sign over her half of the business. But after Laura discovers that Enzo has a second family — a mistress (Shailene Woodley) and a 12-year-old son he had with her during the war — she’s not particularly keen to help.
A further complication: The couple’s beloved son Dino died from muscular dystrophy the year before. And Laura, deeply depressed, blames Enzo.
So yes, there’s a lot for Cruz to dig into. No easy scenes, she says, noting, “I think Adam and I smile at each other twice during the movie.” When she and Mann traveled to Modena, Italy, to research the project, many contemporaries of Laura said she was “crazy” and “difficult.” Cruz doesn’t see it that way.
“The more I found out about her, the more compassion I had for her,” Cruz says. “She was betrayed. She survived the biggest pain a human being can experience — the loss of a child. And she kept the business together, something that she considered also her home. I think the movie was a beautiful homage to a survivor.”
When I tell Cruz I saw “Ferrari” at the screening room in Mann’s West Los Angeles office, she laughs and asks, “Was he sitting right behind you?” Maybe, I answer. I’m not sure. But he did validate my parking ticket.
“He prorated your parking ticket because he’s always doing 20 things at the same time,” Cruz says. “And he wants to do everything himself.”
Was he sitting behind you when you watched the movie, I ask.
“Yes!” Cruz answers. “And I was very nervous about that. I told him last month, ‘Michael, I need to see the movie again. The first time I see a movie, I’m very tough on myself, always criticizing and thinking what I might have done differently. And also, I had you so close to me, looking at my reaction.’ I mean, I was grateful he was there. But I was very nervous.”
Cruz mentions a couple of times during our conversation that she’s a worrier, leaning into it when I ask how (or if) she’s planning on celebrating her 50th birthday in April. “I’m always worrying about everything,” she says, “so I don’t think I could worry anymore because of turning 50.” The number doesn’t bother her. But the prospect of a party does give her pause.
“All my friends are preparing me, like, ‘You are going to be forced to do a party this time,’” she says, quickly adding that she’s unswayed. “If you have a party with a lot of your friends that you haven’t seen in a long time, you end up super stressed out because you want to give all of them quality time and have conversations. But it’s loud and you cannot really hear each other and it becomes so stressful.” She pauses, considering her options. “Maybe I have to learn.”
When we spoke, the SAG-AFTRA strike hadn’t been setttled. Neon, the company distributing “Ferrari,” had reached an interim agreement with the actors’ union, allowing Cruz to promote the film. But we couldn’t talk in detail about her past movies — or even much about future ones, like Nancy Meyers’ “Paris Paramount,” a romantic-comedy that had been set up at Netflix until the filmmaker and streamer clashed over the budget.
“I don’t know if it’s being made,” Cruz says coyly. “You know why? Because we are not talking until the strike is over. And that’s why we don’t know. But it’s not, ‘Oh no, we’re not making it.’”
There could be news when the strike ends, I offer.
“We will talk when it’s over,” Cruz says. “But it’s really good. I’m such a big fan. And also I really think the world needs more romantic comedies. I don’t agree that people don’t want to see romantic comedies. I just don’t buy it. I go back all the time to the ones I love, like Jim Brooks and Billy Wilder and Nancy. They’re magic.”
That covered, we start catching up on the last couple of years, missed connections, a trip I took to Italy during the Omicron virus era that ended up being a little more eventful than planned.
From Hollywood big shots like Martin Scorsese and Ridley Scott to our favorite indie provocateurs, here are the 20 films we’re most thrilled to line up for.
“Do you want me to tell you, since you were talking about COVID ... I haven’t shared this with anyone, but ... you want me to tell you what happened at the Oscars when I was there for ‘Parallel Mothers’?” Cruz waits a beat. I assume this is a rhetorical question and remain silent. “You know, I was there and I tested positive a week and a half before and I only tested negative the day before.”
She had no symptoms, she says, but kept testing positive for a 10-day run until the day before the Oscar ceremony.
“It was craziness,” Cruz says. “And obviously, it was a mass problem and a more serious problem for so many people. I didn’t tell anyone during the interviews, but in my head I was somewhere else. My head was like, ‘I had no idea yesterday if I could be here or not.’”
So maybe reading all those books on medicine isn’t such a bad idea? Cruz laughs.
“I think it is good to keep studying wherever you are interested,” she says. “I keep going to my theater school to prepare most movies with my teacher Juan Carlos Corazza. I love going there with my backpack and my notes and try things and make mistakes. I never want to lose that.”
From the Oscars to the Emmys.
Get the Envelope newsletter for exclusive awards season coverage, behind-the-scenes stories from the Envelope podcast and columnist Glenn Whipp’s must-read analysis.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
