Javier Bardem and Penélope Cruz have been married since 2010, and they’ve also been acting opposite one another, on and off, for 26 years—from Vicky Cristina Barcelona in 2008 to the upcoming Loving Pablo, in which they play Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar and his lover, Virginia Vallejo. But making Asghar Farhadi’s Spanish thriller, Everybody Knows—which opened the Cannes Film Festival on Tuesday evening—was one of the most challenging experiences of Cruz’s career, the Oscar-winning actress said Wednesday morning, even though she had her real-life husband on set as a support.

In Everybody Knows, Cruz plays a mother named Laura who returns to her small, Spanish hometown for a family wedding with her two children in tow. When Laura’s teenage daughter (Carla Campra) is kidnapped during a raucous reception, Laura spirals through heartbreak, suspicion, and crippling helplessness as an ex-boyfriend (Bardem) attempts to help her track down the child. The film is a 130-minute showcase of Cruz’s dramatic depths.

“This woman suffers constantly,” said Cruz, about the punishing ordeal her character faces. “There is no break for her.”

Even though Bardem and Cruz have two children together, the actors—especially Cruz—made a point not to draw on their personal life to realize Laura’s pain.

Cruz has learned the value of setting boundaries for her screen collaborations with Bardem. “Maybe I did that [extreme method] experiment when I was younger—because we both started acting when we were very young. When I was younger, in my 20s, I thought the more I would torture myself and the more I would stay in character for months, the better I would be . . . but then I realized that [torture] is not related to [performance], that I have a life and a job.”

Separating the personal and professional, Cruz continued, “allows me to jump many times in a day from reality to fiction. I love that beautiful dance back and forth . . . that is where I am passionate about the work that I do. It does not make a better result, it does not make your life better, I think, to use certain things from your private life.”

“The fact that [Bardem and I] lean on each other and trust each other so much really helps,” said Cruz. She clarified that making movies together, however, “is not something we plan to do every two years . . . just once in a while, if it feels right.”

“I was full of admiration to see the way Penélope and Javier managed to have very clear limits between fiction and reality, life and work,” said Farhadi. “Their family [life] is so simple and harmonious together with their children . . . they are the very symbol of a happy couple, a loving couple. It was very positive for me to see what deep respect they have for each other.”

Cruz explained that the process of making a movie is somehow more meaningful alongside Bardem, “because I really respect his opinion—obviously his is one of the most important opinions in my life. You are doing your work in front of this other person who is [on screen] not your husband. You feel a little more observed [than you would with different co-stars], but you know you are being observed by someone who you trust, who has your back.”

The making of this particular film was more intensive than usual for the movie-star couple—in part because they had been collaborating with Iranian filmmaker Farhadi for about five years, as he wrote the script with them in mind and befriended the couple in his effort to absorb Spanish culture. “Over two years ago he moved to Spain to live there; he had a Spanish teacher there every day with him. He was living the country. He didn’t take this lightly, the fact that he was coming to another country and telling a story in another language,” Cruz said.

Added Bardem, “It’s one of the most Spanish films a director could make . . . more Spanish than a film made by a Spanish director.”

Cruz and Bardem have endured as romantic partners in a notoriously fickle industry. On Tuesday evening, husband and wife made a glamorous showing on the opening-ceremony red carpet, seeming very much in sync—whispering to each other in their seats inside the Palais and laughing when Bardem stepped on the train of Cruz’s lace-and-tulle Chanel gown. The next morning, when a reporter asked them both about the struggle of balancing their marriage with work, they conferred briefly away from the microphones, before deciding that Cruz would answer. The parity and harmony the couple exhibited even extended to their paychecks on this particular project.

After the panel moderator rattled off Bardem and Cruz’s similarly lauded résumés—each actor has been working for decades, earned three Oscar nominations, and won one Academy Award—a journalist asked whether they were paid equally for Everybody Knows, hitting the hot-button issue of Hollywood’s long-troublesome wage gap.

“Yes,” said Cruz. In a perfect world, it would be a no-brainer that similarly gifted, decorated, and experienced actors receive identical compensation in spite of their gender. But the concept of wage parity in Hollywood—in the world—is still so foreign, that even Cruz underscored her answer with one word that suggested how rare it is to achieve wage parity with a man: “Actually, yes.”