Penelope Cruz was filming her upcoming movie, “The Black Ball,” when doctors warned her of a possible brain aneurysm. The actress opened up about the terrifying ordeal during the 2026 Cannes Film Festival.
Penelope Cruz’s Health Scare
After a 16-minute standing ovation at the film’s Cannes premiere on Friday, May 22, Cruz detailed the health scare.
“And then when we’re about to go out, I was putting on my wig, and they said, ‘Oh, apparently you have some brain aneurysm,'” Cruz — who plays a cabaret singer in the film — recalled during a press conference. “I thought I was about to die. This is something that was totally surreal in my life.”
A brain aneurysm is a bulge or ballooning in a blood vessel in the brain, per the Mayo Clinic. While most brain aneurysms aren’t serious, and don’t rupture, if an aneurysm ruptures, it can become life-threatening and require emergency treatment.
Cruz’s news came one day before she was scheduled to film a night shoot sequence as her character performs for soldiers, according to Variety.
She was fortunately cleared by doctors the following day and able to continue as scheduled.
“I thought, ‘It’s a total miracle. I have to, I must have this in me,'” she explained of the experience. “You experience these things together, yet despite all this, despite the hardship, you can move forward in life.”
Penelope Cruz’s Private Life
GettyThe 52-year-old actress likely leaned on husband Javier Bardem during her terrifying health crisis.
The Hollywood A-listers, who have been married for more than 15 years, reside in Madrid, Spain. While they largely lead a private life with their two children, Bardem recently gushed about his wife in a rare interview.
“She’s a woman I’m so blessed by having had the chance to be at the same time, in the same place, in life,” he told Variety earlier this month. “It’s important that you respect and support your partner, but also that you admire that person for what she is, for what she does. Penélope is an amazing, beautiful, good human being — the way she relates to her family, to her friends, to our kids, to me, to herself. It’s been a lot of years, and I haven’t seen a hint of malice in her.”
He added, “On top of that, she’s amazingly [expletive] beautiful! When I see her being photographed on some magazines, I go, ‘Is that my wife? Jesus, is it? It must be!'”
Prior to tying the knot in 2010, Cruz admitted she didn’t know if she believed in marriage.
“I believe in family, love and children,” she told Britain’s Psychologies magazine in 2009. “I want to have babies one day but not right now. When I do it, I want to do it really well. I want it to be my best project in life.”
Cruz and Bardem, who first met in 1992 but did not begin dating until 2007, wed in a private ceremony in July 2010. They would go on to welcome their first child, son Leo Encinas Cruz, in 2011, followed by a daughter, Luna Encinas Cruz, in 2013.
