Serious work

London, Sept. 1: Penélope Cruz doesn’t like talking about her personal life, and blames the Internet. “I have a big reluctance to talk about anything that might later be misconstrued,” she says.

“I was not worried before, but since the Internet, every time you do an interview, three hundred other people are going to take that story and turn it into something else. I wish I could be more relaxed and funnier in interviews but I can’t because I always regret it afterwards. I take my work very seriously and I don’t want it to be manipulated into something else.”

Another reason for her reluctance is probably her aversion to being asked about her becoming romantically involved with some of her leading men. To her irritation, reports of that aspect of her life have often taken prominence over discussions of her acting, and she has always denied suggestions that she has deliberately set her sights on her male co-stars.

For the past year, the 34-year-old actress has been in a settled relationship with her most recent leading man, Javier Bardem, 39, her fellow Spaniard and multi-award-winning actor whom she first met when she was 16 when they worked together in the film Jamó, jamó and who co-stars in her new movie, Woody Allen’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona.

In between, they have appeared in three other films together, and while they are reluctant to talk about their relationship, friends of the couple say this could be the one that lasts.

When they have finished promoting Vicky Cristina Barcelona, they plan to take a house together in London, where Cruz will spend five months rehearsing and filming the musical Nine, with a cast that includes Nicole Kidman, Daniel Day-Lewis, Judi Dench, Sophia Loren and Marion Cotillard.

Cruz, who studied classical ballet for 10 years, auditioned four times for one of three roles in the movie before director Rob Marshall cast her as Carla, the sexy mistress. Rehearsals begin later this month and will continue until October.

“I can’t wait to start — I’m so excited,” she says. “It will be hours of dancing, hours of singing and I can’t wait to have my feet bleeding again, like when I was a dancer, because I know that feeling.”

We meet in Los Angeles a few hours before she and her co-stars, Bardem, Scarlett Johansson and Rebecca Hall, are due to meet Woody Allen on the red carpet for the premiere of Vicky Cristina Barcelona, which many critics say is one of Allen’s best movies for a long time.

On film sets she has established a reputation for sweetness banded with steely professionalism. She has starred with a remarkable crop of leading men — Nicolas Cage in Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, Matt Damon in All the Pretty Horses, and, most famously, Tom Cruise in Vanilla Sky.

Cruz went on to have a three-year relationship with Cruise, and then dated Matthew McConaughey, her co-star in Sahara. “I’ve never fallen in love with someone I’m working with,” she has claimed. “It’s always been afterwards. If something becomes friendship, then maybe months later it becomes something else, but you can never know. It’s always a mystery.”