Penélope Cruz, photographed at Spring Studios in London. Photographs by Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott. Styled by Jessica Diehl.Woody Allen says of Penélope Cruz: “I don’t like to look at Penélope directly. It is too overwhelming.”

The Spanish box office star Cruz has no trouble looking a beautiful women. Headlining the upcoming Rob Marshall film “Nine”, Cruz is surrounded by sensual beauty: Sophia Loren, Nicole Kidman, Judi Dench, Marion Cotillard, Fergie, and Kate Hudson, with Daniel Day-Lewis holding it all together as the film director played by Marcello Mastroianni in Fellini’s semi-autobiographical original.

Annie Leibovitz captured several of Cruz’s “Nine” costars in this 2001 April cover shot for “Vanity Fair” magazine: Nicole Kidman, Catherine Deneuve, Meryl Streep, Gwyneth Paltrow, Cate Blanchett, Kate Winslet, Vanessa Redgrave, Chloë Sevigny, Sophia Loren, and Penélope Cruz.In Vanity Fair’s November 2009 cover piece on Penélope Cruz, Sophia Loren shares a tender moment between the two Smart Sensuality women: “Penélope is very accurate in her work. She wants to be very precise about what the director wants. And she takes her career very seriously, which she should. I think she loves what she does and it shows on the screen. She has become a real friend. We talked a lot about life and our careers. I talked about De Sica, she talked about Almodóvar. When it was my last day she came to my dressing room. She was crying, and I was crying. This is the first time that I have left a film crying because we got so upset about leaving each other.”

Too spiky for the Academy? Penelope Cruz in Pedro Almodovar’s Broken Embraces. Photograph: PRCruz mines her Smart Sensuality actress genes this fall in a second film, “Broken Embraces”, her fourth film with director Pedro Almodóvar, who knows her inside and out. Film critics are surprised that the controversial film was omitted from Spain’s shortlist for next year’s Academy Award for best foreign language film. 

Penelope Cruz interviewed by the Guardian’s Andrew PulverThe fiery, dramatically sensitive actress talks briefly about her extraordinary relationship with director Pedro Almodóvar, saying that he is the reason she became an actress. Cruz says that he gives her honesty, which is everything to her, even though she fears his confrontation and welcomes it at the same time. 

Returning to Vanity Fair’s , Cruz talks about Almodóvar, saying “Pedro would push me to the limit. He really knows how to press all my buttons. You can only go into something like that when it’s somebody you really trust. I always feel like he’s my safety net. Like I can fly and go far, because he’s going to catch me.”