Penélope Cruz, the Academy Award-winning actress, said she was devastated after shooting her first nude scene at the age of 18, fearing she would never get work again.

Cruz, who appeared on the November cover of Esquire, talked about her first naked moment in director Pedro Almodóvar’s 1992 classic film Jamón Jamón, which she thought would doom her career. “Of course I was not looking forward to those scenes but I did it. Everyone was really respectful, aware of the fact that I was 18,” the 43-year-old said. “I remember the last day of filming, I was crying, saying: ‘What if I never shoot a movie again? The feeling was devastating.’”

 

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Her future husband, Javier Bardem, was also in the film.

In an interview with the publication last year, Bardem recalled “Jamon, Jamon.”

“There was obvious chemistry between us,” Bardem said of Cruz. “I mean, it’s all there on film; it’s like a document of our passion. One day we’re going to have to show the kids — imagine! ‘Mummy, Daddy, what did you do in the movies together?’ Well, my children, you should celebrate this movie as you’re here because of it.”

The striking couple, who costarred in Woody Allen’s comedy Vicky Cristina Barcelona in 2008, proved their on-screen chemistry once again in the recently released Loving Pablo, which is based on Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar’s love life.

It comes after the Spanish beauty admitted she went through a ‘deep change’ after giving birth to her first child with actor Javier Bardem seven years ago.

The beauty told longtime pal Gwyneth Paltrow during an interview with Interview magazine that she now worries less about what people think of her.

Paltrow and Cruz met on the set of the 2007 film The Good Night and have been friends ever since. Cruz said that she and Paltrow hit it off right away.

‘We were alone and talking about our deepest secrets, as if we had known each other for 20 years,’ the Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides star explained.

‘And even though we live so far away and don’t spend nearly enough time together, when I see you, it’s like it was only yesterday.’

Cruz’s Esquire cover will be out on October 17.