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Brand-new mom Penélope Cruz lost no time getting back to her fabulous pre-baby figure, but not by working with a trainer or hitting the gym. So how'd she do it? The secret, Cruz tells U.K. newspaper the Daily Mirror, is that she returned to her ballet roots -- and danced four hours a day!
Cruz, who started as a ballerina before committing to acting (and who got to show off her dancing skills in the recent Nine), says, "I love ballet and I love dancing, and it's a little boring for me to go to the gym because I'm used to the dancing discipline -- it's really hard but much more fun."
Cruz and husband Javier Bardem welcomed a son, reportedly named Leo (they won't confirm or deny the moniker) in January. The couple currently splits their time between Los Angeles and Spain and, because of that, Cruz also credits a healthy Spanish diet with keeping her weight under control. "I love Spanish food. My diet is the Mediterranean diet, which is good food. I eat well but I try to eat healthily." That said, she's not opposed to a little fast food every now and again, admitting to biweekly In-N-Out burger runs. "I do it, like, once a week or once every two weeks," she says. "It's my little treat for myself. I love the Double-Double with fries."
Although Cruz told the Daily Mirror that since the birth of her son "working as hard as I did is not for me any more," she still has a couple of hotly anticipated films in the pipeline, including Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. The film, which screens at Cannes this week and opens in the U.S. on May 20, stars the great Johnny Depp, reprising his role (yet again) as Captain Jack Sparrow. Cruz and Depp had worked together 10 years ago, in Blow, and Cruz jokes, "When I first came to America I only knew two phrases in English. One was, 'How are you?' and the other was, 'I want to work with Johnny Depp.' Then after I worked with him on Blow, I learned how to say, 'I want to work with Johnny Depp again!' He's very addictive and he just gets better and better over the years."
The friendship between Cruz and Deep seems to have added a lot of levity to the Pirates shoot, with Cruz teaching Depp "the raunchiest Spanish," and Depp returning the favor by ambushing his costar with a remote-control "fart machine."
Cruz was pregnant during much of the grueling shoot of On Stranger Tides, and she said she informed the crew of her condition immediately: "They were very caring. It was funny to be dressed as a tough pirate but being treated with delicacy by everybody. I had to learn to sword fight, too. I'd trained for two months before we started shooting."
Happy at home with husband Bardem and baby son, Cruz's dancer's discipline has helped her bounce back physically from the pregnancy, and she seems ready to face whatever the next challenge may be! (Fingers crossed it'll be a guest spot on Glee!)
