Next month, nearly 15 years after Blue Steel was introduced to the world, Ben Stiller returns with Zoolander 2. A lot of the original cast is back—Owen Wilson as so-hot-right-now Hansel; Will Ferrell as the poodle-haired Mugatu; and even Billy Zane, who will likely announce another walk-off—as well as a really, really, really ridiculously good-looking addition: Penélope Cruz. In the sequel, Cruz plays a red bodysuit–wearing special agent (fashion division) named Valentina Valencia. Vogue’s February cover star told Jason Gay that her desire to star in the hotly anticipated follow-up came down to her own Zoolander fandom. “I’m one of those people who’s seen the first Zoolander four or five times . . . For many reasons I need to once in a while do a crazy comedy,” she told Vogue. “I said to Ben, ‘Count on me.’ ” To tide you over until Zoolander 2 hits theaters, here, five things you likely didn’t know about Penélope Cruz.
1. Before she started acting, Cruz studied ballet for nine years, and she has battle scars to prove it. “All of [my toes] are twisted,” she told Time in 2000. “I used to bleed from dancing so much. I would peel my toenails off and throw them away because they were completely black from the pain. To look at them now and see they are like this—they have a lot of life for me.” Cruz has said that the focus and self-control required in dance helped her become an actress. “If I hadn’t had the discipline of all those years in the dance world, it would have been much, much tougher,” she once said. At 15, Cruz earned her first cameo, in the Spanish pop band Mecano’s music video for “La Fuerza del Destino.”
2. Cruz has made six films with Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar, beginning with 1997’s Live Flesh. But before Cruz became the director’s muse, Almodóvar’s film Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! gave her the acting bug. “I’ve never felt so inspired, and [I knew] this is what I want to do,” she told CBS in 2010. “And that week, I looked for an agent. And I did an audition, and she sent me home and she said, ‘You are too young. Come back next year.’ But I came back the week after. And she sent me away again. And then I came back the week after.”
3. Cruz was cast in one of her first English-language movies, The Hi-Lo Country, in 1998, and the language barrier proved to be very difficult for her. “I would lock myself in the bathroom and cry because I didn’t understand what was going on on the set because I didn’t understand everything that the director was saying or what the other actors were saying,” Cruz recalled in 2009. “And I don’t like missing anything.” (She is now something of a linguist and reportedly speaks four languages.) In 2011, Cruz told Vogue that her move to Los Angeles in 1994 made her feel very isolated, and so she developed the habit of taking in stray cats. “I was very lonely,” she said. “I would find cats in the street and take them with me. I raised a lot of cats in that period.”
4. Since she starred in her very first Hollywood film, Cruz has shown a fierce dedication to charity and philanthropy. She photographed Tibetan children in Nepal in the early 2000s, as well as former gang members and recovering drug addicts at the Pacific Lodge Boys’ Home in 2006. She also volunteered in Uganda and India, where she assisted Mother Teresa at a leprosy clinic. Her time there inspired Cruz to donate her entire salary from The Hi-Lo Country to the missionary’s cause. “To spend a week with Mother Teresa? I was more excited to do that than to get the greatest movie,” Cruz once told a reporter. “When you are there, you feel more useful than at any time in your life.”
5. In 2009, Cruz won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her role in Woody Allen’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona, making her the first Spanish actress to ever win an Academy Award. “I still can’t believe that I won the Oscar last year,” she told Charlie Rose in 2010. “Because the way I grew up, and just to dream about becoming an actress and making a living out of that, sounded like science fiction in my environment. You know, I come from a family where we had just what we needed to survive. So to dream about this type of job was crazy.” Adorable fact: The first Spanish actor to ever win the Academy Award (for Best Supporting Actor) is actually Cruz’s husband, Javier Bardem. Talk about a power couple!