Penelope Cruz is the cover star of the latest issue of Net-a-Porter’s The Edit magazine and talked to the publication about a variety of topics, including how she changes the endings of fairy tales she reads to her children.
The 43-year-old actress, who is currently playing Donatella Versace in “The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story”, believes that fairy tales are important but worries about the negative effect they can have on how a child sees the world.
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“Fairy tales matter so much because these are the first stories that you hear from the mouths of your parents,” the mother of two told the publication. “So, when I read fairy tales to my kids at night, I’m always changing the endings – always, always, always, always.
“F**king Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty and all of this – there’s a lot of machismo in those stories. That can have an effect on the way that kids see the world. If you’re not careful, they start thinking, Oh, so the men get to decide everything.”
In the alternate fairy tales that Cruz reads to her children — Leo, 7, and Luna, 4 — she often has her heroines turn down marriage proposals in favour of personal pursuits. “In my version of Cinderella,” Cruz explains, “when the prince says, ‘Do you wanna marry?’ she says, ‘No, thanks, ‘cos I don’t want to be a princess. I want to be an astronaut or a chef.”
The Spanish star also touched on the #MeToo movement, and how she hopes it will lead to change for women in all industries.
“It has to change the rules of our industry and all the other industries in which women are being repressed in so many different ways,” she said. “It cannot just be something that’s there to fill the news for a few months before we move on to something else.”
Cruz also talked about gender bias within the entertainment industry and how it contributes to the larger systemic problems.
“Since the age of 25, [journalists] have been asking me if I’m afraid of aging,” she said. “It’s a crazy thing to ask, and I’ve always refused to answer. They would never ask a man such a question.”
“Obviously that kind of thing is on a different scale than what we were just talking about, but everything builds up, and I consider it to be part of a kind of overall suppression of women.”
