Penélope Cruz

Were you a fan of the first three films, and how exciting was it to be offered the part?
Yes! I had seen the three of them and I loved them. I laughed out loud watching them and was amazed by the character the Johnny [Depp] created. I remember when I saw the first one, I was, like, ‘Wow, that’s so brave and so brilliant.’

What did you like about reuniting with Johnny and working with him on this?
Johnny and I hadn’t worked together for 10 years, but now that I’ve spent a lot of time with him again, after all these years, it just gets better and better every day. One of the things that I was most surprised about was how humble he was. He’s so kind to everyone and he is really funny. He’s one of the funniest people I know and when you work with someone like that it’s special.

You are the first female pirate ever on Pirates of the Caribbean; tell us about her character and what she was like to play?
Angelica has the pirate mind: very tricky, manipulative and dangerous. She loves playing games but has a good heart and her motivation is always a good one. She’s also full of contradictions and I think that’s what makes the character so interesting to play. So to get what she wants, she’s capable of tricking anybody, but at the end what she wants is something good.

What did you think when you first saw the set, when you first stepped onto a pirate ship?
It was incredible and really magical to shoot on that huge ship. It was so beautiful and we were shooting in the middle of the night sometimes until the sun came up. But we were lucky we were able to shoot in so many stunning locations like Hawaii and Puerto Rico.

What was it like getting to travel to so many exotic places?
One of the beautiful privileges of our work is that we get to travel so much to discover beautiful places. All the places we visited in Hawaii were so beautiful. Sometimes being an actress takes you to places that you would never see if you didn’t have this job. We also get to learn to do other strange things – like sword fighting!

Tell us about the sword fighting. How did you prepare to be a female pirate?
I trained for two months before we started shooting. I trained with all the stuntmen and my body double. I couldn’t do anything that was dangerous, but I was very protected by everybody on set.

What did you most enjoy about making this film?
As an actress, it’s such a big privilege to be part of one of these films. You get to see from behind the scenes how these films are made, and I found a very interesting character in a movie that is really big. I love the pirate world because it’s so attractive and interesting.

And the zombies, what did you think when you saw them?
I didn’t really get scared of the zombies because they were all such great guys and we worked together for six months. They were in make-up for five or six hours a day and they would be up at 3am to get that look!

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