Actor and activist Penélope Cruz talks to Mark Smith about her process of becoming Donatella Versace for her US TV debut as the sister of murdered designer Gianni Versace. Cruz is happy to be back in Madrid, after living in London last winter during the filming of Kenneth Branagh's 'Murder on the Orient Express'. Cruz says she's constitutionally unsuited to gray days and an early nightfall, as it affects her brain.

Cruz became the first spanish woman to win an Academy Award, for her 2008 role in Vicky Cristina Barcelona, a film written and directed by Woody Allen and produced by Harvey Weinstein. We'll talk Cruz's Hollywood women experience in another post, but must share Penelope's resourceful way of dealing with gender roles between her own daughter and son.

“Fairy tales matter so much because these are the first stories that you hear from the mouths of your parents,” she says. “So, when I read fairy tales to my kids at night, I’m always changing the endings – always, always, always, always. F*****g 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.’”

Cruz’s subversive fairy-tale heroines, she says, are prone to declining proposals of marriage, or making the proposals themselves. An example? “In my version of Cinderella, when the prince says, ‘Do you wanna marry?’ she says, ‘No, thanks, ’cos I don’t want to be a princess. I want to be an astronaut, or a chef.’” Cruz laughs wickedly and closes an imaginary book.

Penélope Cruz is styled by Barbara Martelo in 'Female Fortitude', lensed by Cedric Buchet for Porter Edit February 2016, 2018.