PENÉLOPE MOTHERHOOD CHANGED ME

THE PRIVATE STAR OPENS UP ABOUT KIDS, LOVE AND APPROACHING 50

-  Jennie Noonan

Penélope Cruz has been lighting up the big screen since she was a teenager, and now that she’s a couple of years away from celebrating a milestone birthday, the 48-year-old says she still feels as vital as ever. “I imagined maybe I would feel inside older than I feel. And I don’t,” she says. “I would never lie about my age or be afraid of birthdays. I think that is crazy. I want to get very, very, very old. I want to enjoy every second.”

Cruz and her husband, Javier Bardem, with whom she shares son Leo, 11, and daughter Luna, 9, made history last year when – along with Kirsten Dunst and Jesse Plemons – it was the first time two real-life couples had been nominated for Academy Awards at the sametime. Cruz was up for Best Actress in Parallel Mothers, a film directed by her frequent collaborator Pedro Almodóvar, while her husband was nominated in the Best Actor category for playing Desi Arnaz opposite Nicole Kidman in Being the Ricardos. However, the notoriously private pair living in Madrid’s suburbs kept their celebrations muted. “If we were normal people, we would do a party,” Bardem, 53, told Deadline at the time. “But we’re actually quite boring.”

The camera-ready couple first met in Spanish director José Bigas Luna’s film