The Spanish actress revealed she was warned of a possible brain aneurysm during production of the film The Black Ballpresented in official competition at Cannes, and that she had to receive medical authorization before being able to finish her scenes.
More fear than harm. In the middle of a press conference for his latest film, The Black Ballin Cannes, Penélope Cruz revealed that she had experienced some medical scares during filming, which began in August 2025. The one who returned for the first time since 2019 on the Croisette could not have actually never finished filming her scenes: her The doctor told her she might need to take a break from filming to treat an aneurysm, a weak, bulging area in an artery wall.
The day before her nocturnal filming sequences, where her character as a cabaret singer performs in front of soldiers, the medical warning fell like a chopper, the 52-year-old actress revealed this Friday, the day after the film’s screening at the Cannes Film Festival.
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“And then, when we were about to go out to shoot, I put my wig on, and they said, ‘Oh, apparently you have a brain aneurysm,'” she said, describing her reaction. After believing it was a “joke,” the Oscar-winning actress realized the seriousness of the situation. “I thought I was going to die. It’s something totally surreal in my life.”
An alert which was ultimately short-lived, since the actress was able to resume filming the next day with the authorization of the doctors. “I said to myself: “It’s a total miracle. I have to, I have to have that in me,” she added.
“We experience these things together”
During this short but tough ordeal, Penélope Cruz was however able to count on the unfailing support of her directors, Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi, and of the entire film crew. “We live these things together, and yet despite all this, despite the difficulties, we can move forward in life,” she added during the press conference of La Black Ballgiven the day after the screening which concluded with a 16-minute standing ovation in the Lumiere amphitheater of the Palais des Festivals. A moment that the actress described as “one of the strongest and most powerful I have ever experienced at the festival”. So all’s well that ends well.
