Penelope Cruz seems to make a habit of dating her leading men in movies, but she doesn't want to talk about love scenes on or off the screen. Her latest project is action-packed with Cruz becoming determined to do all her own stunts... even if it's only to prove her brother wrong. Steve Pratt reports.

SPANISH actress Penelope Cruz grew up watching the Indiana Jones movies, so she jumped at the chance to appear in the new action film Sahara. The film is based on Clive Cussler's internationally best-selling series of adventure novels featuring hero Dirk Pitt - played by Matthew McConaughey. He and Cruz have become a couple off-screen as well.

She says that doing an action movie was "a fun experience" but is less willing to talk about her romance with her co-star. All she'll say is that she doesn't talk about her relationships now. "It's my personal life and I'm responsible to protect it," she says.

No doubt her wariness stems from all the publicity that surrounded her romance with Tom Cruise in the wake of his break-up with Nicole Kidman.

McConaughey has been equally reticent, although she accompanied him to the Grammy Awards this year. "There's something about the Spanish and Texans that connects us," he says. Cruz is happier talking about the camel she had to work with in Sahara, which was filmed in Morocco and Spain. "I trained and trained and became best friends with my camel. In the end, he was talking to me," she says.

One scene required her to ride the camel at speed alongside a moving train and she was determined to do her own stunts. "I was the girl but I didn't want to be treated like physically I couldn't do it," he says.

"It's fun to know that if I ever get back to Morocco I can get on a camel and without saying anything I can gallop away. Everyone is going to be very impressed."

She plays a Spanish doctor, a role that required her to keep up a tough workout routine to stay in shape for the physical demands of the role. "We had a great trainer who came with us everywhere and we really trained hard," she says. "For something like Sahara, you need to work out every day because if not, you get hurt."

She did have her doubts on some days. The day she had to get on the camel, she said, 'Bring me down, I have to do this with a double' but director Breck Eisner was adamant that the actors perform the scene themselves.

What 30-year-old Cruz is keen to challenge is her brother Eduardo's opinion that she wasn't good casting for action movies. She aims to prove him wrong - first, with her stunts in the desert in Sahara and next in the gunslinging Bandidas, alongside Salma Hayek.

"He was surprised they'd cast me in something like Sahara," she says. "He said, 'you're too clumsy, how are you going to do it?' You know how little brothers always treat you like the girl.".

She and Hayek play bank robbers in Mexico who give money to the poor. "My God, we worked hard. I had to learn to do all the tricks with the guns. I was so bad at it," she says.

After making her name in offbeat roles directed by the likes of Pedro Almodovar and Alejandro Amenabar, she moved on to bigger budget studio fare like Vanilla Sky with Tom Cruise and Captain Corelli's Mandolin with Nicolas Cage.

She's kept in touch with her independent European cinema roots

with films like the Italian drama Don't Move, in which she plays a hotel maid who falls for her rapist. The film open in the UK last month.

It's all part of her plan to challenge her screen image. "I was always a little girl with a lot of imagination. When I was young, the only thing I wanted was for people to look at me," she says.

At the same time, she knows the danger of being known solely for being a pretty face, saying that "the most difficult thing in the world is to start a career known only for your looks and then try and become a serious actress. No-one will take you seriously once you are known as the pretty woman."

She certainly turned McConaughey's head during the filming of Sahara. Now the couple plan to make a romance together called The Loop later this year.

She doesn't rule out marriage in the future, but says it's not an overriding obsession. "If I had a baby one day, maybe it would make sense. When I do it, I won't work as much as now," she says.

And she is pretty busy. She's got two new films to make with Almodovar back in Spain. He's written both scripts - one's a comedy, the other's a drama. Before that she'll also be starring with Ralph Fiennes in the British drama Chromophobia.

"There's so much more I want to do. I love that there's always more to learn. In Spain actresses work until they are old, and that's my plan," she says.

* Sahara (12A) is now showing in cinemas.

Published: 07/04/2005