Penelope Cruz Shares Rare Comments About Husband Javier Bardem & Their Children's Privacy, Explains Her Fear of Driving & Why She Doesn't Worry About Her Age

On why she has a fear of driving:

“My sister was run over by a car in front of me when I was eight or nine. 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.’”

On her latest role of Laura Ferrari, the hardened wife of Enzo Ferrari:

“Every day is a question of how she makes it through the day. She has this tragedy that she will never recover from, and it’s also what made their marriage break because they both feel they failed to save him.”

On how she has difficulty regulating the degree of empathy she feels and how much seeps into her personal root system while playing roles:

“I’m lucky to have it, but maybe it makes me feel or suffer things more. 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… Sometimes [the characters I play] can be uncomfortable and painful. 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.”