Penelope Cruz says she’s afrаid to drive after witnessing her sister get hit by a car
Penélope Cruz admitted the reason why she has a “fear of driving” during a new interview. The 49-year-old actress recalled the moment when her sister, Mónica Cruz, was “run over by a car” when she was a child.
“I have a fear of driving. My sister was run over by a car in front of me when I was eight or nine,” Penélope told Elle in an interview that was published on Thursday, January 18.
“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.’”
If she watched the accident happen today, Penélope pointed out that she likely “would have been hysterical” rather than “numb.” Now, she confessed, the Pirates of the Caribbean:
On Stranger Tides actress struggles with how deeply she empathizes with others’ pain. Although it’s a strong trait to have, she perceives it as a “back-and-forth dance between fiction and reality.”
“I’m lucky to have it, but maybe it makes me feel or suffer things more,” Penélope noted. “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.”
As an actress, Penélope understands that her empathy goes a long way whenever she gets into a different character.
“Sometimes, [the characters I play] can be uncomfortable and painful,” the Vanilla Sky star acknowledged.
“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.”
