Penélope Cruz had serious health complications during the filming of La bola negra. Fifty-two years old the actress felt nauseous and was taken to the hospital, where the doctors first scared her that she had a brain vessel bulge. The Spanish beauty admitted at the Cannes Film Festival that she feared for her life.
“When we were going to go shoot the movie, I was putting on my wig and the doctors said, ‘It looks like you have a brain aneurysm.’ I thought I was going to die. It was something completely incredible for me,” she said at a press conference in Cannes. Aneurysm occurs when the vessel wall weakens, which bulges out and creates a bulge. If it ruptures, it can cause bleeding in the brain and be a life-threatening condition.
At the same time, Cruz said that she initially thought the warning was a prank. Although her doctors advised her to rest, she wanted to continue filming an important scene and asked if she could appear in front of the camera. In the end it turned out to be a false alarm and her cerebrovascular accident was fine.
So filming could continue. “Filming hasn’t stopped. But it’s very important for me to talk about these things,” she added. In the film directed by Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi, she played the cabaret singer Nené. The audience at the Cannes festival gave a standing ovation for 16 minutes.
