Penélope Cruz has opened up about a "heartbreaking" movie role that required "the most intense preparation" of her career.
The Spanish actress spoke on stage at BAFTA: A Life in Pictures in London earlier this month in celebration of Penélope's illustrious career in TV and film.
Whilst chatting about her starring role in the 2004 Italian film, Don't Move, the 49-year-old admitted that the preparation was demanding and required her to lose her Spanish accent.
Penélope played the role of Italia in the film, which was adapted from the book by Margaret Mazzantini. In the movie, Italia is a destitute woman who becomes involved with a successful surgeon, who is played by Sergio Castellitto, the film's director.
Going into detail about her preparation for the part, the actress explained that she would walk around Rome, which is where filming took place, speaking in Italian.
"I would be there just talking in Italian all day long and dreaming in Italian because I had to lose the accent. I was playing half Italian, and half Albanian, so I had to lose the Spanish accent.
"It was the most intense preparation that I've ever had to go through because it's not doing an accent or another language, it's also losing 100 per cent your own accent."
Speaking about how attached she became to the character, Penélope continued: "I was totally in love with this character. It was hard to let it go after. It was one of those times where I just didn't know what to do to let it go. It wouldn't leave me. And it's hard to explain something like that, it can sound so weird, but it's true."
The actress went on to say that the trauma her character experienced was "heartbreaking".
"There is so much pain in that human being that for me, that was such a revolution playing her," she explained. "It was such a revolution making that film, an internal revolution because there are people in the world, many unfortunately, that are in a situation like that."
Penélope, who most recently starred in Michael Mann's new biographical thriller about Enzo Ferrari, also teased her upcoming projects.
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Revealing her plans to go behind the camera to direct a documentary, Penélope said: "I'm directing a documentary that unfortunately I cannot share what it's about because it's the most important project that I have and I don't want to talk too early."
Explaining how fear and uncertainty caused by the coronavirus pandemic drove her to finally take action on the project, the mom-of-two said: "During COVID, when we were all in lockdown and [the documentary] has nothing to do with COVID, but during COVID, I realized that I didn't know what was going to happen so there was a real fear.
"I remember having this thought of I have to be here. Nothing can happen because I want to raise my children. And the other thought that I had is because I haven't been able to do this documentary yet and I need to do this in this lifetime."