Penélope Cruz Feared Her Bunker Role Could Spill Into Her Marriage

Penélope Cruz said she was worried that playing a fragile married couple in Florian Zeller's Bunker could bleed into her real-life marriage to her co-star, Javier Bardem. She spoke on a panel at the DGA Theater in Los Angeles, part of Contenders Film Los Angeles, according to Deadline.

Contenders is Deadline's awards-season conference series, where filmmakers and cast members discuss their work before the year-end awards race. Zeller joined Cruz on the panel to talk about the film, which casts Cruz and Bardem as its husband-and-wife leads.

The pairing was the obvious starting point. Zeller said that when he first discussed the project with Cruz and Bardem, he pointed to Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut, another film built around a real-life couple, Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman. Zeller's reference shows how the director wanted the couple's history to sit in the background of the performances.

Cruz said she and Bardem have made films together only every five or six years. Working together too often, she said, would feel tricky and risky. Keeping the gaps wide, in her telling, is part of how they protect the partnership.

The physical side of the shoot also stood out to her. Cruz said the film's big fight scene was filmed over three days, and that performing it was terrifying.

Awards-season panels like this one give the public a rare look at the choices behind a finished film. Actors often talk about how they prepare, while directors explain how they cast and shape a story. In this case, the conversation kept returning to one question: how close can two performers get to a story about a marriage in strain before the work starts to affect their own lives?

Bunker is directed by Florian Zeller, and Cruz and Bardem star.