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Penélope Cruz admitted the reason why she has a “fear of driving” during a new interview. The 49-year-old actress recalled the moment when her sister, Mónica Cruz, was “run over by a car” when she was a child.
“I have a fear of driving. My sister was run over by a car in front of me when I was eight or nine,” Penélope told Elle in an interview that was published on Thursday, January 18. “I remember she was wearing a red coat. Speaking of red! And for me, time stopped. It’s a great trauma, because I saw her losing consciousness. And I was numb in the hospital, telling people, ‘Oh, my sister just got run over by a car.’”
If she watched the accident happen today, Penélope pointed out that she likely “would have been hysterical” rather than “numb.” Now, she confessed, the Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides actress struggles with how deeply she empathizes with others’ pain. Although it’s a strong trait to have, she perceives it as a “back-and-forth dance between fiction and reality.”
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“I’m lucky to have it, but maybe it makes me feel or suffer things more,” Penélope noted. “I can feel it; it’s like a hypersensitivity in every way — visually, to sound, to people’s feelings. It’s been one of the main things I deal with in therapy: how to work a balance so I can keep feeling those things without making those feelings my own.”
As an actress, Penélope understands that her empathy goes a long way whenever she gets into a different character.
“Sometimes, [the characters I play] can be uncomfortable and painful,” the Vanilla Sky star acknowledged. “It’s hard to let them go, but at the end, I always feel they made me a little bit more compassionate than I was two months ago. And with the safety net that you know this is not your reality. It creates less judging and more compassion in every area of my life.”
Aside from her career, Penélope has been embracing age even though she used to be “bothered” by the concept of getting older.
“But you know why I don’t worry about that? Because people have been asking me about age since I was 20-something. I was more bothered then than now,” she pointed out. “Now, it makes more sense, to discuss turning 50. It’s a huge, beautiful thing, and I really want to celebrate that with all my friends. It means I’m here and I’m healthy, and it’s a reason to have a party. But when I was 25, they would ask me these psychotic questions, things you would not believe, and the only weapon I would have was not to answer.”
After learning to avoid answering similar “psychotic” questions, Penélope revealed one more tactic she has as a celerity: “Even now, on the red carpet, when they shout to ‘Turn around,’ I always pretend I didn’t hear what they said,” she said.
