While then men of Hollywood can command lead roles well into later life and be cast opposite ever-younger leading ladies, all without ever having to dodge an intrusive question about grey hairs or wrinkles, the same rule certainly doesn’t apply for actresses: cursed with a limited shelf life, they’re too often branded ‘too old’ for a role once they’ve hit the positively ancient 3-0 mile stone and weighed down with questions about their fears of ageing in the spotlight. It’s a ridiculous double standard which Oscar-winner Penélope Cruz has no time for – and she’s developed an admirable strategy for dealing with these tedious lines of interrogation.
‘Journalists have been asking me, since I was, like, 22, “Are you afraid of ageing?”’ she revealed in a new feature for Interview magazine, which saw the star interviewed by her long-time friend and fellow actress Gwyneth Paltrow. ‘That is such a crazy question for a 22-year-old girl or, for that matter, for a 42-year-old. I combat that craziness by refusing to answer the question.’ Applause, please.
‘When it comes to talking about ageing as an actress, I feel like, “What the f—k? I’m not even going to give you even two minutes to honour your question. It doesn’t deserve that,’ she added.
Penélope revealed that since becoming a mother three years ago (to Luna, her daughter with her husband and Vicky Christina Barcelona co-star Javier Bardem), she’s had less and less time for such questions. ‘I started thinking, “Come on, it’s 2017.Why do women still have to be talking about this? It’s crazy.” That sense only got bigger when I had children,’ she told Gwyneth.
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Also up for discussion in her Interview tete-a-tete was Penélope’s much-anticipated turn as Donatella Versace in the forthcoming American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace, which is set to debut on BBC Two later this year. Opening up about the extensive preparation required to take on the role of one of the fashion world’s biggest names, she admitted she was unwilling to present the designer as a ‘caricature’ due to the sensitive nature of the subject matter.
‘I worked a lot with a dialogue coach to find the way that Donatella speaks, which is a little different from the way she spoke in the Nineties,’ she said. ‘The accent that she has, it’s Italian with a very international flavour – very rock’n’roll. I didn’t want to do an imitation of Donatella, or a caricature. I wanted to try to capture the essence of who she is.’
‘This is a delicate story, because I’m playing someone who is alive, someone who lost her brother in a horrible way, and someone who still misses him very much 20 years later,’ she added.
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