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Movies & TV

Penelope Cruz hits the mother lode in Ma Ma

Penelope Cruz made her feature debut as an expectant mother in 1992s Jamon Jamon, and has since taken on all sorts of matriarchal roles in films like Blow, Volver and Broken Embraces.

I even played a prostitute giving birth on a bus in Live Flesh, Cruz says.

None of those performances prepared Cruz for her recent role as a mother, for real.

Everything changes the second you become a parent, says Cruz, who now has two young children with husband Javier Bardem.

You start seeing the world with different eyes. Its a revolutionary change. It even changes your relationship with nature. You experience many things for the first time again. Thats the treasure. You get to revisit your own childhood because now youre doing it with them.

Cruz arrived in Toronto on Tuesday to introduce her new film Ma Ma at TIFF. After working the Elgins red carpet, the Spanish actor dashes into a Toronto hotel room, still in her elegant off-white gown. I pull out a seat for her, as shes busy hammering away at her phone. She has to quickly tend to her kids before taking the bejeweled hoops out of her ears and getting down to business. This type of frantic high-wire act is exactly why Cruz is relieved shes not working like she used to.

Years before, I was doing four movies in a row, she says about her days juggling films by Woody Allen and Pedro Almodovar.

I was always on set. I was taking care of all those characters but not myself. Before I became a mother, I found a different rhythm that allowed me to do other things, to have a little more time to myself, to research, prepare, rehearse and have those months before you start shooting to get to know who the character is. So when I became a mother, I was already in a rhythm that was more appropriate for that. My family is my absolute priority.

Ma Ma is an obvious fit for Cruz. She produces and stars as Magda, a mother who discovers she has breast cancer and barely has time to think about herself before making it her mission to build a new family for her son. The characters warmth, flighty charm and offbeat humour reminded Cruz of her own mother. She treated this particular role as an homage.

She also found spirituality in Magdas optimistic stab at fighting for new life. The character gets pregnant while her cancer spreads, a development that is scientifically questionable but also a moving way to remember how emotionally connected death and birth can be. Cruz gets that having children makes you take stock of your own mortality.

Ive never been in a situation like hers but its very easy to understand as a mother what her fear is, she says. You start imagining yourself in a decade and then the next one. Where am I? What about when my kids have their own kids? What happens when they are 50? What will I see or not see? Everybody asks themselves the same questions. It just takes over like an incredible force of nature.

Ma Ma screens Wednesday (September 16), 2 pm, Elgin. See review here.

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