Penélope Cruz On How A Covid Lockdown Led To Her Fourth Oscar Nomination In ‘Parallel Mothers’ – The Actor’s Side

Winning her fourth Oscar nomination this year, Penélope Cruz continues to break her own records. The Spanish star was previously nominated for Best Supporting Actress in Nine, and won the Oscar in that category for Vicky Christina Barcelona. Her previous Best Actress nomination came for Pedro Almodóvar’s Volver, and now she is nominated this year in the lead category for Parallel Mothers, her latest collaboration with Almodóvar — and their seventh overall.

Clearly, Oscar loves Cruz, and for good reason. She started out this awards season at Venice by taking the Best Actress prize, and has won several critics awards as well. Almodóvar himself has called her work in this film perhaps her greatest ever, and it certainly was a challenge and a long time coming; the initial idea was broached around the same time they were making the Oscar-winning All About My Mother.

Cruz is also making history this year by being part of one of the rare husband-and-wife teams to be nominated for Actress and Actor in the same year, as her husband Javier Bardem is up for Being the Ricardos. We talk about all this, what it means this time around, her work with Almodóvar especially in Parallel Mothers, and so much more when she joins me at our new studio for this edition of my Deadline video series The Actor’s Side.

To watch our conversation, click on the video above.