page_title: Penélope Cruz
section_title: 2016–present
hierarchical_section_title: Penélope Cruz / Acting career / 2016–present
caption_attribution_description: Español: Premios Goya 2017
context_page_description: Penélope Cruz Sánchez is a Spanish actress and model. Signed by an agent at the age of 15, she made her acting debut at 16 on television, and her feature film debut the following year in Jamón Jamón. Her subsequent roles in the 1990s and 2000s included Belle Époque, Open Your Eyes, The Hi-Lo Country, The Girl of Your Dreams, and Woman on Top. Cruz achieved recognition for her lead roles in the 2001 films Vanilla Sky, All the Pretty Horses, Captain Corelli's Mandolin, and Blow. She has garnered numerous awards, including an Academy Award from three nominations.
  She has since appeared in a wide variety of films, including the comedy Waking Up in Reno, the thriller Gothika, the Christmas film Noel, the action-adventure films Sahara and Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, the romantic comedy To Rome with Love, the crime drama The Counselor, and the mystery film Murder on the Orient Express. She was praised for her roles in Volver and Nine, receiving Golden Globe and Academy Award nominations for each. She won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in 2008 for playing volatile painter María Elena in Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona.
context_section_description: Cruz's first film of 2016 was the American comedy, Zoolander 2, co-starring and directed by Ben Stiller. In the sequel film, Cruz portrayed a secret Interpol agent who enlists models Derek Zoolander (Stiller) and Hansel McDonald, played by Owen Wilson, to help find out who is killing the world's most beautiful people. Specifically written for her persona, Cruz, a fan of the original 2001 film, was one of the first actors to be cast in their parts. Upon its release, the film received generally negative reviews from critics, who felt that it had "more celebrity cameos than laughs." 
  Cruz's other film that year was Louis Leterrier's British spy comedy Grimsby, in which she played a powerful philanthropist, opposite Sacha Baron Cohen and Mark Strong. Cruz was reportedly offered $400,000 for her appearance in the film, which was released to generally mixed reviews from critics, who felt that the actress was highly underused and "looking even less invested here than she did in Zoolander 2."
  Also in 2016, Cruz reteamed with Fernando Trueba on his Spanish-language period pic The Queen of Spain, a sequel to Trueba's 1998 drama The Girl of Your Dreams. Set in the 1950s, twenty years after the events of the original film, Cruz reprised the role of an actress, who has become a Hollywood star and returns to Spain to film a blockbuster about Queen Isabella I of Castile. Selected to be shown in the Berlinale Special section of the 67th Berlin International Film Festival, the Spanish comedy-drama was screened to lukewarm reviews, but received five nominations at the 31st Goya Awards, earning her Cruz her ninth nomination.
  Loving Pablo, a Spanish drama film directed by Fernando León de Aranoa was released in 2017, starring Cruz in the role of Virginia Vallejo, and her husband, Javier Bardem, in the role of Pablo Escobar. Based on Vallejo's bestselling memoir Loving Pablo, Hating Escobar, the film was launched to mixed reviews during the 74th Venice International Film Festival. In order to play the role of the Colombian journalist, Cruz studied hundreds of interviews of Vallejo. Cruz had a supporting role in Kenneth Branagh's Murder on the Orient Express (2017), the fourth adaptation of Agatha Christie's 1934 novel of the same name. The mystery–drama ensemble film follows world-renowned detective Hercule Poirot, who seeks to solve a murder on the famous European train in the 1930s. Cruz plays missionary and passenger Pilar Estravados, a Hispanic version of the novel's Swedish Greta Ohlsson. The film has grossed $306 million worldwide and received mixed to positive reviews from critics, with praise for the cast's performances, but criticism for not adding anything new to previous adaptations.
  As of December 2017, Cruz has various film projects in different states of production. In 2018, she made her television debut by co-starring in the role of Donatella Versace in the second season of the FX anthology series American Crime Story entitled The Assassination of Gianni Versace. Her performance was highly praised by critics and she received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Limited Series or Movie. In addition, Cruz reteamed with Bardem on the Spanish-language psychological thriller film Everybody Knows, directed by Asghar Farhadi.
  In May 2018 it was announced that Cruz, had joined 355, a female-led spy film by Simon Kinberg alongside Jessica Chastain, Lupita Nyongo, Bingbing Fan. In 2019, Diane Kruger, Édgar Ramírez, Sebastian Stan and Emilio Insolera joined the cast of the film. The film is set to be released by Universal Pictures in 2021.
caption: Cruz at the 31st Goya Awards in 2017
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