Penélope Cruz on Why 'The Bride!’ Role Meant So Much & Bringing Family Along (Exclusive)

Penélope Cruz and Peter Sarsgaard are promoting their new movie “The Bride!,” directed by his wife Maggie Gyllenhaal.

“Extra” spoke with the two about working with Maggie. Cruz called it “a blessing” that Gyllenhaal envisioned her for the role. 

She said “If I put myself in her shoes, maybe, like, I wouldn’t be the first obvious option for a character like this, but for her, I was. It means so much for me because it’s like, 'No, you are putting somebody with an accent and somebody that is from Spain.’”

In the film, Penélope plays Myrna Mallow, a detective who’s struggling for recognition a man’s world. 

Penélope has “seen the evolution” of women through her own career.

She said, “When I started I was around 19. Eighteen is when I started to also work in English but I spoke very little English because I learned French before so I’ve been in so many situations where that was looked at in a way that you know, it was very tricky and it has changed, but it’s not yet in a place where it’s just natural.”

“When I started working in English and working in America, it was like a big conversation, you know, if you were going to cast or not somebody with an accent and it has changed a lot but very slowly,” Cruz went on. “Maggie doing this kind of thing… It all makes sense… Reflecting a reality that was also there in that time… It adds something else to the character and I’m very grateful that she thought of me for this.”

Peter gushed over Maggie’s talents as a writer and director, calling her success “totally inevitable.”

He commented, “If you know Maggie, from the minute I first met her, all of it was evident. Actually, she had just written a screenplay when I was meeting her and I said, ‘Oh, let me read it.’ She said, 'No, no, no. I just need to finish this one, get it done, and move on to the next one.’ It was like somebody who was already thinking of herself as a writer at that point… She’s so visual.”

“When she thinks of her movies, she thinks of images,” Peter explained. 

Penélope also spoke about bringing her family along while filming in New York, something they don’t do often. 

Cruz shared, “We were there for a couple of months and it was great… I’ve been very lucky working in the summer or the things that I can do in Spain or the things that are like short amount of time and you put them together with Easter holidays or Christmas holidays and I’ve been able to manage."