Penelope Cruz Speaks Out About #MeToo & Her Frustration With the Industry

Penelope Cruz graces the cover of PorterEdit, out now.

Here’s what the 43-year-old The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story star had to say…

On asking Donatella’s permission to play her: “I said to Donatella, this is keeping me up at night because it’s such a big responsibility to play someone who’s not only alive, but someone I respect so much. And she told me, if somebody’s going to do it, I’m happy that it’s you. Her words gave me the freedom to do this. I think she could hear in my voice that everything was going to be done from a place of respect.”

On her hatred of fairytales: “Fairy tales matter so much because these are the first stories that you hear from the mouths of your parents. So, when I read fairy tales to my kids at night I’m always changing the endings – always, always, always, always. F–g Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty and all of this – there’s a lot of machismo in those stories. That can have an effect on the way that kids see the world. If you’re not careful, they start thinking: ‘Oh, so the men get to decide everything.’”

On #MeToo: “It has to change the rules of our industry and all the other industries in which women are being repressed in so many different ways. It cannot just be something that’s there to fill the news for a few months before we move on to something else.”

On her own frustrations with the industry: “Since the age of 25, [journalists] have been asking me if I’m afraid of aging. It’s a crazy thing to ask, and I’ve always refused to answer. They would never ask a man such a question. Obviously that kind of thing is on a different scale than what we were just talking about, but everything builds up, and I consider it to be part of a kind of overall suppression of women.”

For more from Penelope, visit Net-a-porter.com.