Penélope Cruz is as human as all of us are. Like many of her own fans, the model and actress has some unhealed scars from a traumatic event in her childhood. Very few people know that the actress struggled with heightened sensitivity for a good part of her life, which also reflected badly on her career.
Known for her versatility on-screen, Cruz recently opened up about her journey as she still carries the trauma from that childhood incident. In a recent interview, she also revealed that she has a fear of driving because of this incident.
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What Was The Childhood Incident That Scarred Penélope Cruz?
Penélope Cruz was speaking during an interview when she opened up about her fear of driving stemming from a traumatic childhood incident. In an interview with ELLE, the 49-year-old actress said the horrifying experience when her sister was run over by a car in front of her at the age of eight or nine.
“My sister was run over by a car in front of me when I was eight or nine,” Cruz recalled, stating that “time stopped.” “It’s a great trauma, because I saw her losing consciousness. And I was numb in the hospital, telling people, ‘Oh, my sister just got run over by a car.’”
However, she said that if the incident had happened in her adult life, it “would have been hysterical.”
The actress said the incident also left her with hypersensitivity. She said she has a certain “hypersensitivity in every way — visually, to sound, to people’s feelings,” which she is “lucky to have,” but also makes her “feel or suffer things more.”
Her fear of driving became an issue when she was playing the role of Laura Ferrari, co-owner of Ferrari, in Michael Mann’s film ‘Ferrari’. The actress said that she wasn’t eager to get behind the wheel for the role because of her fear of driving.
Talking about the therapy she has received to deal with her hypersensitivity, Cruz said, “It’s been one of the main things I deal with in therapy: how to work a balance so I can keep feeling those things without making those feelings my own.”
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Penélope Cruz On Her Upcoming Movie ‘Ferrari’ And Her Role In It
In ‘Ferrari’, Cruz portrays Laura Ferrari alongside Adam Driver as Enzo Ferrari. The film revolves around the life of the famed Italian car manufacturer. It also explores the strain on Enzo and Laura’s marriage. The movie also shows infidelity, the loss of their son Dino, and the looming threat of bankruptcy for the company.
Cruz also talked about how she felt the pressure of being the first person to portray the co-owner of Ferrari onscreen. “Every day is a question of how she makes it through the day,” Cruz said of Laura. “She has this tragedy that she will never recover from, and it’s also what made their marriage break because they both feel they failed to save him.”
As for the film, neither Cruz nor Driver drove the cars on set due to insurance reasons. Driver talked about it during a press conference stating how the production team “wouldn’t let me drive the cars for insurance reasons.”
“As I said before, making a movie is a miracle and they don’t want me touching the thing that’s the most expensive part,” Driver continued. “I don’t drive the cars, except in pre-production we raced Ferraris — obviously, newer Ferraris, can’t afford the other ones. And then at the beginning, I’m not driving that one, it’s on a dolly,” he added.
“Again, they don’t trust me with small pieces of equipment. Big pieces of equipment like sandwiches, they will let me handle,” he said.
As Cruz has taken up the role of Laura Ferrari, it’s evident that she is willing to go beyond her fears to tackle the remnants of trauma the accident has left her with.
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