Actress Penelope Cruz fuels rumours about pregnancy

Sultry Spanish actress Penelope Cruz remains tight-lipped about whether she is pregnant, but photographs of her from a recent premiere of her latest film Broken Embraces seem to suggest that she is indeed carrying compatriot Javier Bardem's child. Cruz wore an unflattering emerald gown that cleverly hides whether she has a baby bump.

But in an interview published today in the Times, the 35-year-old muse of Pedro Almodovar - who directs and co-stars with Cruz in Broken Embraces (above), which is out next week in the UK - is enigmatic about her plans for the future. "I want something else," she says, "I may only make one film a year, other years none at all," suggesting that the rumours which first surfaced in May when she cancelled several public appearances at the Cannes film festival are true.

Cruz also hints at general sense of ennui and disenchantment with film-making on the whole, scaling back her commitments and creating "a much better equilibrium between work and time for my life. I can rest, go travelling, have time to do nothing. Before I might take 15 days off in a year and try to leave my BlackBerry in my room to please my family.

"The turning point was when I realised I was measuring the years going by according to whatever the films were I was working on, the countries I was shooting in," says Cruz, whose performance as Bardem's crazed ex-wife in Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona won her Best Supporting Actress at this year's Oscars. "Now I can work, but I'm not on movie sets the whole year. I can say no until there is something I really need to do."

Elsewhere in the interview, Cruz reciprocates the love that Almodovar recently confessed to feeling for her - depsite, of course, being gay. "He is so special," Cruz says. "He has a box of surprises. You can see it in his work, but he is like that every day - you never know what he is capable of saying, he could have changed a whole scene the night before and blow you away with an amazing idea. He’s always creating. He doesn't stop himself. He is not afraid of judgment, yet doesn't judge his characters. He's very inspiring."