Penelope Cruz Sanchez, known popularly as Penelope Cruz, is an Academy Award winning Spanish actress. She started out as a model at the age of 15, and subsequently made her feature film debut in the 1992 Spanish comedy-drama Jamon Jamon, which earned her a Goya Award nomination for Best Actress that year. Since then, Cruz has appeared in over 60 films in a career spanning over two decades, and has won several international accolades.

The actress garnered critical acclaim early on in her career in Spanish cinema, courtesy of her performances in films like Belle Epoque (1992), Love Can Seriously Damage Your Health (1997) and The Girl of Your Dreams (1998), the last of which won her the Goya Award (Spanish National Film Award) for Best Actress in 1998. Subsequently, she forayed into Hollywood with a supporting role in the western drama film The Hi-Lo Country (1998). Cruz`s breakout year was 2001, where her performances in the biographical crime drama Blow and the sci-fi psychological thriller Vanilla Sky not only announced her arrival in Hollywood, but in international cinema as well. Following appearances in the French comedy-adventure film Fanfan la Tulipe (2003) and the Italian drama film Don`t Move (2004), Cruz played the central role in the Pedro Almodovar directorial Volver (2006) - a performance which earned her the maiden Academy Award nomination of her career, her second Goya Award and the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actress that year.

In 2008, Cruz essayed the role of the wildly temperamental Maria Elena in Woody Allen`s acclaimed comedy-drama Vicky Cristina Barcelona, which remains one of her career-best performances. Besides winning an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress, she was also honored with a BAFTA Award and a Goya Award for her work in the movie. Her other movies include Nine (2009), the fantasy swashbuckler film Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (2011), The Counselor (2013) and the mystery drama Murder on the Orient Express (2017).