Penelope Cruz Sanchez, better known as Penelope Cruz, is a Spanish actress. She gathered critical acclaim as a young actress for films such as Jamon, jamon, The Girl of Your Dreams, and Belle Epoque. She has also starred in several American films such as Blow, Vanilla Sky, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, and Nine. She is perhaps best known for her work with acclaimed Spanish director Pedro Almodovar, in Broken Embraces, Volver and All About My Mother.

Cruz has been awarded three Goyas, two European Film Awards, and the Best Actress Award at the Cannes Film Festival. Cruz’s first major films were Jamon, jamon and Belle Epoque, a film which won an Academy Award for Foreign Language Film; she was aged sixteen in her first film. The latter of these nominations made her the first Spanish actress to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress.

In 2009, she won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, a Goya, and a BAFTA for her role in Vicky Cristina Barcelona. She is Spain’s first female Oscar winner and also becomes the sixth Hispanic person to win an Oscar after Jose Ferrer, Rita Moreno, Benicio del Toro, Anthony Quinn, and fellow Spaniard Javier Bardem. Cruz was nominated for her third Academy Award in 2010 for her role as Carla Albanese in the film version of the musical Nine. This nomination marked only the third time in the history of the Oscars where the winner of the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress was nominated for Best Supporting Actress again in the following year (the other actresses to have achieved this were Estelle Parsons in 1967 and 1968 and Lee Grant in 1975 and 1976).

She is the first Spanish actress to win an Academy Award, and one of the only actors besides Robert De Niro and Ingrid Bergman to win the Oscar for a role speaking two different languages. Besides the Oscar, Cruz won the BAFTA, the Independent Spirit Award, the National Board of Review Award, and the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Supporting Actress in Vicky Cristina Barcelona. She also earned Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild nominations for her role.

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