Penelope Cruz has revealed that she cried almost every day during filming for Pedro Almodóvar's latest film 'Parallel Mothers'.
The emotive drama follows the story of two mothers, Janis and Ana, who give birth on the same day, according to RTÉ.
In the film, Cruz plays Janis whilst Milena Smit plays Ana, and although the women share a wide age gap, they are both single mothers who got pregnant by mistake. Sharing a hospital room together, their children are swapped soon after birth.
Speaking to Kay Sheehy on the RTÉ Radio 1 arts show ''Arena' on Thursday evening (January 27), Cruz, who has worked alongside Almodóvar many times, said: "We needed a lot of time in rehearsal,
"We were lucky to have four months of rehearsal because the personality of Janis is very different from mine and she is not allowed to express her feelings and the same with Milena.
"Pedro didn’t want us to be hugging and crying throughout the whole film, so we needed to find a tone and find restraint and I was actually straining to do the scenes without crying so for the first two months it was actually impossible.
"Milena and I would start reading and we would start hugging and crying and Pedro knew that was going to happen so we needed to go through that process and find a way of expressing and on top of that when my character wants to express something real, she can’t because she has to lie.
"Inside she is dying of pain and fear, so it was challenging and there was incredible adrenalin every day. I enjoyed every second of the process."
Cruz, 47, lives with her husband Javier Bardem in Madrid with their two children, Leo and Luna.
The Spanish actor has starred in seven of Almodóvar's movies, but she revealed on 'Arena' that her family were playing a prank on her when he first contacted her over the phone, as she could not believe it was him.
"I’ve been a huge fan of his since I was a really young girl. I grew up watching his film’s and I am his number one fan." the Vanilla Sky actor said.
"He saw my first two movies I did when I was 18 and they both came out at the same time and I was lucky because they were very different from each other and he saw them, and he called me and when he called me, I didn’t believe it - I thought it was a joke, but it was him.
"He asked to get together, but he said I was too young for the role he was thinking of and I wasn’t right at the time. He said he would call me in the future, and he did, and we had a great connection from day one."
Both Cruz and Almodóvar will appear on The Graham Norton Show this evening at 10:35pm on BBC One.
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