Penlope Cruz and her Twice Born baby boom

Penlope Cruz plays a discontented infertile academic in the movie Twice Born, but in fact she was breast-feeding her own young son during the shoot. For some scenes in the movie her character, Gemma shares the screen with a host of new-born children, as she tries to adopt a baby.

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"Some of these babies were only a week old, "she told The Guardian. "And so they were smelling me and that made them want to eat, but I was playing a woman who couldn't feed because she hadn't given birth! That created a very strange but alive dynamic between me and those babies."

Twice Born is set in 1990s Bosnia, during the bloody war that tore that land to pieces. Cruz plays Gemma, an Italian who returns to contemporary Sarajevo with 16-year-old Pietro. Gemma wants Pietro to learn more about his deceased photographer father, an American called Diego (played by Emile Hirsch) with whom she had once lived.

"I think this movie is homage to all women, a homage to motherhood," says Cruz. The movie also stars Jane Birkin as the psychologist whom Gemma visits. Twice Born is directed by Sergio Castellitto.

Aside from her role in Woody Allen's To Rome with Love, the 38-year-old actress has just finished filming I'm So Excited, Pedro Almodvar's return to comedy. She is currently working on Ridley Scott's adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's novel The Counselor.