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Here's a multiple choice question. You will watch Woody Allen's Vicky Christina Barcelona when it hits the cinemas later this year because:
a) the comedy is set to do to Barcelona, what Allen's earlier films did for Manhattan;
b) It stars Javier Bardem, hot property now after his Oscar-grabbing No Country turn; and
c) The internet is rife with reports that the film features a steamy ménage à trois featuring Scarlett Johansson, Bardem and Penelope Cruz.
If a film's hype machinery can influence its final outcome, then Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona has already got a lot going for it.
I'm not even going to ask you what you ticked, but after her tempered performance in Volver and looking as good as she did in the film, Penelope Cruz in a Woody Allen movie is promising.
Most actors would find it flattering - to carry a film's box office prospects on their shoulders, but Cruz will probably not think too much about it post her Oscar-nominated turn in Volver.
The Spanish actress knows a thing or two about being typecast as a pretty face.
"The most difficult thing in the world is to start a career known only for your looks, and then to try to become a serious actress. No one will take you seriously once you are known as the pretty woman," she famously quipped once.
A remark like that resonates well at a time when beauty pageant hopefuls desire "world peace" for the rest of us and good looking women in Hollywood, for the longest time, want to be "taken seriously as an actor."
That's a standard sound-bite from any young startlet, but how many actually manage to do something about it at any point in their careers?
There are very few actors in mainstream Hollywood who have successfully crossed over from European cinema and been able to straddle both worlds effortlessly. She may have starred in some tepid Hollywood films in the past but now Cruz finds herself in a position where she seems to get the best of both worlds.
Think about it - how many of the A-list in Los Angeles have the opportunity to work with Woody Allen and then follow it up with a Spanish film by Pedro Almodovar, one of the finest filmmakers in Europe today?
Digging deep into a well of clichés, we will tell you that what's working for this Spaniard is the fact that she's more than just a pretty face.
Here's what a morning on the internet will tell you about her. A Madrileno, Penelope was born in the Spanish capital to a merchant father and a hairdresser mom on April 28, 1974.
She spent nine years studying classical dance at Spain's National Conservatory and was 15 when she dropped out of school; beat a 300-strong competition at an agency audition to become a part-time model.
It was her role in the 1992 Oscar-winning Belle Epoque that pushed Penelope into the spotlight. The same year, she starred as Silvia, the impoverished pregnant factory worker in the 1992 hit Jamon Jamon which, incidentally, was also current boyfriend Javier Bardem's first big hit.
Like Bardem, she was soon noticed by leading Spanish filmmakers and soon enough she was doing films with Almodovar (Carne Tremula) and Alejandro Amenábar (Abre Los Ojos).
The latter, with its mind-bending script, was a huge hit in Europe and would later be adapted by Cameron Crowe for Hollywood - Vanilla Sky - in 2001 starring Tom Cruise, Cameron Diaz with Cruz reprising the same role she did in the Spanish original.
By now, her exotic good looks and a penchant to take her top off in movies had earned her a legion of male fans on both sides of the Atlantic.
She was soon snapped up by Hollywood and starred alongside Billy Crudup and Woody Harrelson in Stephen Frears's 1998 film The Hi-Lo Country - her first English-language film. Rumour has it that she donated her entire paycheque to Mother Teresa's charity in Kolkata.
She was Isabella Oliveira, the gorgeous Brazilian chef in the lacklustre comedy Woman on Top. Hollywood though, had never seen a sexier chef in the movies, she had the audience eating out of her hand.
Vanilla Sky was a runaway hit in the US earning more than $100 million at the box office. By now, she had also starred alongside some of the top Hollywood actors - Matt Damon, Johnny Depp, Tom Cruise and Matthew McConaughey.
The last three men she also romanced in real life, providing enough fodder for tabloids - especially given that Cruise and she got together soon after his high-profile divorce from Nicole Kidman.
But while her relationships kept the tabloids busy, her films were bombing at the box office - Sahara, Gothika (also starring Halle Berry), Head in the Clouds (with Charlize Theron) and even a smoking hot combination like Cruz and Salma Hayek couldn't stop Bandidas from sinking.
And then in 2006, Almodovar offered her the role of a lifetime in Volver as Raimunda - a hardworking, working-class mother with a teenaged daughter and a good-for-nothing husband.
Almodovar's movies have always portrayed women as strong characters and a stunning Cruz (she's never looked this good onscreen) nailed the part, winning a Best Actress nomination at the Oscars in 2007, eventually losing out to Helen Mirren.
In Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona due for release later this year, Cruz plays the nutty ex-wife of a flamboyant artist (Bardem) who is in a relationship with an American tourist (Johansson) in Barcelona.
She is also scheduled to team up with Almodovar in Los Abrazos Rotos which will be shot this year. She teams up with Bardem again in Rob Marshall's adaptation of the musical Nine in 2009.
Two of the hottest imports out of Spain now - Bardem and 'Pe', as she is known to the Spanish media, have been together since the filming of the Vicky Cristina Barcelona - their relationship is celebrated by the local press, so there might be a happy ending there as well for Penelope.
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