Penelope Cruz hates fairytales.
The 43-year-old actress is happy to read classic stories to her and husband Javier Bardem’s children Leo, seven, and four-year-old Luna, but she always changes the ending because she isn’t impressed by the "machismo" in the tales.
She said: "Fairy tales matter so much because these are the first stories that you hear from the mouths of your parents. So, when I read fairy tales to my kids at night I’m always changing the endings – always, always, always, always. F***ing ‘Cinderella’ and ‘Sleeping Beauty’ and all of this – there’s a lot of machismo in those stories.
"That can have an effect on the way that kids see the world. If you’re not careful, they start thinking: ‘Oh, so the men get to decide everything.’"
The ‘Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story’ actress hopes the #MeToo anti-harassment campaign will signify a wide and lasting change, rather than just being a short-lived topical issue.
She told Net-a-Porter’s The Edit magazine: "It has to change the rules of our industry and all the other industries in which women are being repressed in so many different ways. It cannot just be something that’s there to fill the news for a few months before we move on to something else."
Penelope admitted to her own frustrations with the movie industry, insisting women get asked very different questions about their profession than men do.
She said: "Since the age of 25, [journalists] have been asking me if I’m afraid of aging. It’s a crazy thing to ask, and I’ve always refused to answer. They would never ask a man such a question. Obviously that kind of thing is on a different scale than what we were just talking about, but everything builds up, and I consider it to be part of a kind of overall suppression of women."
Penelope Cruz changes fairytales
