Penélope Cruz became an Oscar winner when 2008’s “Vicky Cristina Barcelona” made her the first Spanish actress to win an acting Oscar.
Seventeen years later, she is not chasing a second statuette so much as choosing which vehicle to ride to the ceremony — because this season she has three.
The biggest of the three isn’t even her largest role.
Los Javis’ “La Bola Negra” — the Federico García Lorca-inspired epic that shared the best director prize at Cannes, drew a near-record ovation on the Croisette and sold to Netflix in a bidding war — is shaping up as the streamer’s marquee awards title of the year. Cruz surfaces in it as a bawdy cabaret singer, a role the size of a cameo that critics off the Croisette and now here at Telluride have already tagged a scene-stealer.
In Olivia Wilde’s A24 dinner-party comedy “The Invite,” which opened over the summer, she has another scene-stealing part opposite Edward Norton, a second potential route into the supporting actress race.
