Penelope Cruz wanted to become a ballet dancer

London (ANI): Spanish actress Penelope Cruz has revealed that she had wanted to become a ballet dancer when she grew up. Cruz, 35, who won an Academy Award last year for her role in Woody Allen"s Vicky Cristina Barcelona, said that all she wanted to do was dance as she grew up and she spent 10 years training at the ballet bar.

From newly released pictures of hers, the actress could be seen striking one of her ballet poses as a young girl, and on the US news show 60 Minutes she said that she still cannot believe she won an Oscar. “I still can"t believe that I won the Oscar last year because of the way I grew up," the Mirror quoted her as saying.

“Just to dream about becoming an actress and making a living out of that sounded like science fiction in my environment. “You know, I come from a family where we had just what we needed to survive. So to dream about this type of job was crazy," she said.

But she did say that learning how to dance helped her land acting roles. “If I hadn"t had the discipline of all those years in the dance world, it would have been much, much tougher," she said. “I mean, it goes too far sometimes. I mean, I used to take my toenails - they would die from dancing - so I would just take the whole toenail and throw it away, and not feel anything. “But I loved it," she added.