Penelope Cruz and Ben Stiller Both Lost a Parent During the Zoolander 2 Shoot, and the Film Never Stopped for Either of Them
· Thought Catalog
Updated 6 minutes ago, July 6, 2026
“I was doing Zoolander when my father died. We were shooting Friday night. He died at two in the morning. Really young, a heart attack out of the blue. I remember being so close to passing out from the shock. Two weeks before that, the same thing had happened to Ben Stiller with his mom. The film couldn’t stop for him, or for me. Every time I see Ben, I think, ‘Wow, what we went through.’” — Penelope Cruz
Penelope Cruz’s father died of a heart attack at 2 a.m. on a Friday. By Monday morning she was back on set in Rome, shooting a comedy and trying to make people laugh.
Her dad, Eduardo Cruz, was 62. He died at his home in Spain in the early hours of June 18, 2015, while his daughter was filming Zoolander 2. He had a history of heart problems, but the attack still came out of nowhere. She flew to Madrid for the funeral on Sunday and was back in Rome on set the next morning. Production never paused.
“Really young, a heart attack out of the blue. I remember being so close to passing out from the shock,” she told PORTER magazine.
Two weeks earlier, Ben Stiller had lost his mother, the comedian and actress Anne Meara, who died on May 23, 2015, at 85. He was in the middle of the same shoot. The two actors leaned on each other through it, carrying parallel losses through a comedy that made no room for either.
“The film couldn’t stop for him, or for me,” Cruz said. “Every time I see Ben, I think, ‘Wow, what we went through.'”
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