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Penélope Cruz Sanchez was born on April 28, 1974 in Madrid (Spain). She is 5'6" (1.68 meters). She did nit finish her secondary Studies. She studies 10 years of classical ballet, 3 years of Spanish ballet and 4 years of theater (Cristina Rota's School and in New York). She was one of three children of a merchant and a hairdresser and she was named due to the inspiration of a Joan Manuel Serrat song.
The eldest daughter of a hairdresser and an auto mechanic, growing up in Madrid, Spain, PENELOPE CRUZ didn't want the normal pretty pony or a pretty stud, she instead dreamed of swans and nutcrackers and handsome princes! She further studied classical ballet at the National Conservatory for nine years.

Cruz worked steadily in Spanish cinema from her 1991 debut in El Laberinto Griego (Greek Labyrinth), for the next seven years. Cruz also made a brief and forgettable trip to the American shores, and accepted a role in a 1993 telepic, Framed, featuring Timothy Dalton. And then in Belle Époque, which won a 1994 foreign film Oscar. She then played what she deemed "the ugly woman" in Live Flesh and in Mother (1999), in which Cruz depicted a nun impregnated by a transvestite. She filmed La Niña de Tus Ojos (The Girl of Your Dreams), a role that would earn her a 1999 Best Actress Goya. She also appeared in the Hollywood feature, The Hi-Lo Country, with Woody Harrelson and Billy Crudup.