A Spanish actress. She made her acting debut at 16 on TV and her feature film debut the following year in Jamón, jamón (1992), to critical acclaim. Her subsequent roles in the 1990s and 2000s included Open Your Eyes (1997), The Hi-Lo Country (1999), The Girl of Your Dreams (2000) and Woman on Top (2000). She achieved recognition for her lead roles in Vanilla Sky and Blow, both in 2001.

In the 2000s she has appeared in films from a wide range of genres, including the comedy Waking Up in Reno (2002), the thriller Gothika (2003), the Christmas movie Noel (2004), the action adventure Sahara (2005), the animated G-Force and the musical drama Nine. Her most notable films to date are Volver (2006), for which she earned Golden Globe and Academy Award nominations, and Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008), for which she received an Academy Award.

In the 2000s she had been in long term relationships with her co-stars Tom Cruise and Matthew McConaughey. In the summer of 2010, she married Spanish actor Javier Bardem.